We have seen some exciting times on the internet with the growth of our favorite search engines and the new facets of SEO that emerge from the depths to adapt with the ever growing demand of organic search marketing. The coming years will show us things that we never thought of and the search engines themselves are going to continue to grow in hopes of giving their loyal viewers unique ways to find the best results from the many search queries formed each day.

Yahoo! is already developing its new look for showing its results to all of us. Yahoo! has been working on an open platform to let webmasters and viewers alike help make the results more relevant to the viewer’s searches while adding functionality where none previously existed. This new open source search is called by the “coined” name: SearchMonkey

So what is SearchMonkey? SearchMonkey is an open platform to generate applications and info bars that enhance the usefulness and relevance of search results. ysearchblog.com said “Developers can build two types of applications using SearchMonkey: Enhanced Results and Infobars. Enhanced Results replace the current standard results with a richer display. All the links in the Enhanced Results must point to the site to which the result refers. Infobars are appended below search results and can include metadata about the result, related links or content, or links for user actions (such as adding a movie to a Netflix queue).”

Here is an example work up of an enhanced results application:

Old way of viewing search results

New way of viewing search results

Remember this is just one enhancement that was made so far there is a few dozen applications submitted and you can view them here at the yahoo search gallery.

If you think that is good news then you better hurry as they are accepting new entries to what these enhancements and info bars will include. If you are a webmaster or just a hobby enthusiast, Yahoo is holding a developers contest and awarding prizes. Each category has a $2,500 prize and all entries are eligible for the $10,000 grand prize. Here is a list of the 4 categories:

• Best Enhanced Result
• Best Infobar
• Most Innovative Use of Structured Data
• Best Data Service

It ends this Saturday so you only have 4 more days left so go to searchmonkeychallenge.com and design a search result application you think would be useful to viewers and you may become a lucky winner.

There is a good deal of information about SearchMonkey, more then I can write in one post so head on over to Yahoo’s blog where you can read both as a user and a developer on the progress of Yahoo’s new face.

Jim Trivolette

“The SEO Doctor”

Blackwood Productions