hack the boss ted drake yahoo! france. 2 boss basics “boss is a data api. it’s not a search...

Hack the BOSSTed DRAKE

Yahoo! France

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BOSS Basics

“BOSS is a data API. It’s not a search API”

-Vik Singh, BOSS Architect

www2009 Conference, Madrid

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•Change ranking

•Create your own look and feel

•Use your favorite ads

•Mash with external APIs

BOSS = Freedom

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Coming Soon…

•SLA

•Customer Support

•Fees: -Free for most uses-Costs based on usage

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BOSS Details

• REST based API.

• XML or JSON output

• Web, News, Image, SiteSearch, and Spelling Suggestion services

• Time span filtering for News Search

• Delicious Tags and Popularity

• Keyterm extraction

• Microformat and RDF data

• Extended abstracts

• Recognizes most search filters from Yahoo! and Google (backdoor hacks)

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What is the most important part of your application?

• The results display?

• The text ads?

• The rounded borders?

• The smooth animations?

• The perfect URL?

THE QUERY STRING!!!

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The Query

• Tells you what the user is looking for

• Generates related topics

• Powers secondary APIs

• Can be generated by a search box, URL, tags,or keyword extraction from the page.

• The Query is your BFF!

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Let’s Start Hacking!

•Get an API key

•http://developer.yahoo.com

•You don’t need a URL for now.

•Update it later for better tracking and promotion.

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Site Specific Results

Search only one site:

/ysearch/web/v1/golf+site:vw.com?

Search from a select group of sites:

/ysearch/web/v1/golf?sites=vw.com,vwtrendsweb.com,performancevwmag.com,caranddriver.com

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Tag or Title Filters

Use the inurl: filter to simulate tag search:/ysearch/web/v1/inurl:golf?

Use intitle: to filter results with query in title/ysearch/web/v1/intitle:golf?

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Get Related Sites

Use related:foo.html to find related sites

/ysearch/web/v1/related:http://www.caranddriver.com/car/2006-models/2006-golf.html?

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BOSS Keyterms

• Keyterms are words used to find a site while searching on Yahoo!

• Listed in order of relevance.

• /web/v1/{query}?view=keyterms

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Delicious Tags and Popularity

• How many times has a page been saved in Delicious?

• What tags have been associated with the page? How many times?

•view=delicious_saves,delicious_toptags

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KeyTerms + Delicious Tags: What are they good for?

• Relevancy

• Related Searches

• Search Suggest

• Tag Clouds

• Trigger secondary APIs

• Highlight Popular Results

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What it looks like

<keyterms><terms><term>Bucharest</term><term>city</term><term>Romanian</term><term>population</term><term>Romania</term><term>architecture</term><term>city centre</term><term>clubs</term></terms></keyterms>

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BOSS Mashup Framework

• Python based framework to mash BOSS API with secondary web services and proprietary data

• Easy integration with Google APP Engine

• Powers the infamous YUIL (4 hour search) project.

• Fast prototyping with minimal code

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BOSSY Code on BOSS Mashup Platform

__author__ = "Vik Singh (viksi@yahoo-inc.com)"

from yos.util import text, typechecks

from yos.yql import db

from yos.boss import ysearch

def month_lookup(s):

for m in ["jan", "feb", "mar", "apr", "may", "jun", "jul", "aug", "sept", "oct", "nov", "dec"]:

if s.startswith(m): return m

def parse_month(s):

months = filter(lambda m: m is not None, map(month_lookup, text.uniques(s)))

if len(months) > 0:

return text.norm(months[0]).capitalize()

def parse_year(s):

years = filter(lambda t: len(t) == 4 and typechecks.is_int(t), text.uniques(s))

if len(years) > 0: return text.norm(years[0])

Relevancy Hacking

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Location Based Relevancy

•Where am I?

•Where am I going?

•What can I find?

Map generated by FirePin application on iPhone

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Location Based Relevancy

• Fire Eagle: Standardized location and sharing platform• Live location tracking• Find upcoming traffic cameras, landmarks, restaurants, headlines,

photos, twitter buzz, etc…• Shared locations with friends• Mining Interesting Locations and Travel Sequences from GPS

Trajectories for Mobile Users by Yu Zheng, Lizhu Zhang, Xing Xie and Wei-Ying Ma

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Secondary SourcesWikipedia, Craigslist, Government Data…

1. Blah2. Foo3. Blah Blah

1. Baz2. Bar3. Foo

1. Foo

• Multiple sources to increase relevance

• DuckDuckGo.com = BOSS + Wikipedia (and other services)

• Understanding User's Query Intent with Wikipedia by Jian Hu, gang wang, Fred Lochovsky and Zheng Chen - www2009 conference

•OpenData: DataMob.org, TheInfo.org, InfoChimps.org

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Real Time Events

• Tweet News: Twitter + News Search

• Twitter users share most timely articles

• Relevancy highlights tweeted storiesBOSS

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Internal + External Data Sources

BOSS

• Tech Crunch Search: BOSS + Access to proprietary data

• Create custom tables in YQL

•BOSS “Vertical Lens” defines what internal data BOSS should index as well as your preferred external sources.

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Offline Analysis

Coloralo• requests extra images • caches them• analyzes them for relevancy

Coloralo finds coloring book images.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

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Quick and Easy semantic Search

• Limit your results to sites with microformats or rdf data:searchmonkeyid:com.yahoo.page.uf.hreview

• Request structured data, keyterms, and Delicious data from BOSS:view=keyterms,searchmonkey_feed,searchmonkey_rdf,delicious_toptags,delicious_saves

• Sample request:http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/cocorosie+searchmonkeyid:com.yahoo.page.uf.hreview?appid=YourAppId&format=xml&start=0&count=15&view=keyterms%2Csearchmonkey_feed%2Csearchmonkey_rdf%2Cdelicious_toptags

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Inurl and Intitle Hacks

• Use your favorite search engine hacks with BOSS.

• Most of the SERP advanced search tricks will work with your BOSS requests.

• This does not include Google, Yahoo!, or other specific patterns such as !sports

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Website Description

• Get a more complete picture of a target web site by combining multiple requests

• Find the number of external sites linking to the site:/ysearch/se_inlink/v1/{site}?omit_inlinks=domain

• Find the pages within the site: /ysearch/se_pagedata/v1/{site}?

• Find related web pages:/ysearch/web/v1/related:{site}?view=delicious_saves,delicious_toptags

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Filter News by Time

• Older, less timely articles may have more natural relevancy. Control this by selecting the age range for news articles.

• Use orderby=date to show latest instead of most relevant.

• What happened while you were asleep: /ysearch/news/v1/{query}?age=9h&orderby=date

• Limit news articles to 1-7 days old:/ysearch/news/v1/{query}?age=1d-7d

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Vertical Focus

•Vertical Search Engines already have a niche audience.

•Limit searches to appropriate sites: InsiderFood

•Truevert creates a model of word relations in context to its niche: environmental.

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Go Beyond the Web Site

•Desktop: Xobni for Outlok

•Tools: Zemanta finds related information for blogs and emails

•Modular: Create an application for Facebook, Yahoo, MySpace and more with the Open Social standard.

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Go from Search to Action

•Keyword Finder uses BOSS keyterms to return the top 10 keywords used by successful sites for a query

•Bossy returns a single answer to questions. Where is Big Ben? London.

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Resources

• Yahoo! BOSS: http://developer.yahoo.com/boss

• BOSS Mashup Framework: http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/mashup.html

• YQL: http://developer.yahoo.com/yql

• Fire Eagle: http://developer.yahoo.com/fireeagle/

• Google App Engine: http://appengine.google.com

• Amazon Web Services: http://aws.amazon.com

• oAuth: http://oauth.net/

• Open Social: http://www.opensocial.org/

• Open Data: http://theinfo.org

• Alt Search Engines: http://www.altsearchengines.com/

• BOSS Hacks: http://bosshacks.com- Add your hack to http://www.bosshacks.com/hacks/open-hack-day-london-2009