I had meant to blog about SearchMonkey ages ago, but last.fm's post 'Searching with my co-monkey' about a live example they've created on the SearchMonkey platform has given me the kick I needed. They say:
The first version of our application deals with artist, album and track pages giving you a useful extract of the biography, links to listen to the artist if we have them available, tags, similar artists and the best picture we can muster for the page in question.
Some background on SearchMonkey from ReadWriteWeb:
At the same time, it was clear that enhancing search results and cross linking them to other pieces of information on the web is compelling and potentially disruptive. Yahoo! realized that in order to make this work, they need to incentivize and enable publishers to control search result presentation.
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SearchMonkey is a system that motivates publishers to use semantic annotations, and is based on existing semantic standards and industry standard vocabularies. It provides tools for developers to create compelling applications that enhance search results. The main focus of these applications is on the end user experience – enhanced results contain what Yahoo! calls an "infobar" – a set of overlays to present additional information.
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SearchMonkey's aim is to make information presentation more intelligent when it comes to search results by enabling the people who know each result best – the publishers – to define what should be presented and how.
(From Making the Web Searchable: The Story of SearchMonkey)
And from Yahoo!'s search blog:
This new developer platform, which we're calling SearchMonkey, uses data web standards and structured data to enhance the functionality, appearance and usefulness of search results. Specifically, with SearchMonkey:
- Site owners can build enhanced search results that will provide searchers with a more useful experience by including links, images and name-value pairs in the search results for their pages (likely resulting in an increase in traffic quantity and quality)
- Developers can build SearchMonkey apps that enhance search results, access Yahoo! Search's user base and help shape the next generation of search
- Users can customize their search experience with apps built by or for their favorite sites
This could be an interesting new development – the question is, how well does the data we currently output play with it; could we easily adapt our pages so they're compatible with SearchMonkey; should we invest the time it might take? Would a simple increase in the visibility and usefulness of search results be enough? Could there be a greater benefit in working towards federated searches across the cultural heritage sector or would this require a coordinated effort and agreement on data standards and structure?
Update to link to the Yahoo! Search Blog post ;The Yahoo! Search Gallery is Open for Business' which has a few more examples.