While Yahoo may not be the biggest fish in the search engine pond these days, a number of innovative services let the company continue to float – even and despite having sold their search back-end to Bing. One of those creative approaches is re-selling that same back-end search to others in the form of Yahoo Search BOSS, a service that lets users get access to Yahoo search, news, and other results. The new version of BOSS was released in April, but has seen numerous updates since.
Since the time of its original release, five major updates have taken place, and at least one more is on its way. The updates that have been implemented are:
- Support for advanced controls on BOSS news. Powered by Yahoo News, this sub-section of BOSS V2 now allows developers to pull content that is related to specific headlines, regions, or languages.
- Support for SQL and YQL through BOSS mashup. BOSS now lets users change the back-end features of BOSS by implementing either the standardized SQL code or user-built YQL code.
- Support for HTTPS. The BOSS service is already highly secure, using the oAuth security interface for its API, but an additional layer of support can now be added in the form of HTTPS. The HTTPS access to BOSS V2 retains all BOSS features.
- Documentation has expanded. The library of examples for possible BOSS V2 actions now includes C#, Java, PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby codes for potential developer changes.
- The ability to limit daily use. Developers can set a cap on the amount they want to spend each day. BOSS V2 will automatically shut down when the cap is reached.
The next feature on the horizon is increased support for blog searching, and the Yahoo team has indicated that more features are also on their way.
[Sources include: The YSearch Blog]