In a new attempt to improve its search engine and compete with Google, the leader of the search market, Yahoo announced today a new service, called BOSS, a short for Build your Own Search Service. As Yahoo explained the goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo Search index.

BOSS gives to the developers access to Yahoo's investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure. From the technical point of view BOSS is an open API with as few rules and limitations as possible. For examples, the developers will get unlimited queries per day and the blending of proprietary and Yahoo Search Content will be allowed.

Of course, Yahoo hopes that BOSS will increase the number of searches and eventually there will be also a financial reward for the developers.
In the near future, Yahoo hopes that the sites that incorporate the tool will eventually run search ads. Yahoo said that already four sites are using its BOSS service. Hakia, a leading semantic search engine, uses BOSS to accelerate its semantic analysis of the Web by accessing the Yahoo index's of web documents, while Me.dium Search combined the BOSS API with its insight into the real time surfing activity of the crowds to build a unique "Crowd-Powered" social search engine prototype.

Another service which uses BOSS is Daylife To-Go, a new self-service, hosted publishing platform from Daylife. Anyone can use this platform to automatically generate 100% customizable pages and widgets. Daylife To-Go uses the BOSS API platform to power its Web search module.

Cluuz generates easier to understand search results through patent pending semantic cluster graphs, image extraction, and tag clouds. The Cluuz analysis is performed in real-time on results returned from BOSS API.

In May, Yahoo improved its search service with SearchScan, basically a combination between Yahoo Search and McAfee’s SiteAdvisor technology. When a users will conduct a search on Yahoo the site with security concerns, such as spyware, adware and other malicious software that can infect and damage a user's PC, will be eliminated from the results.

In addition, SearchScan will alert the users about the potentially risky sites by displaying a red warning sign in search results. Search Scan will scan for three types of risks in Yahoo’s search index: Browser Exploits, Dangerous Downloads and Unsolicited Email.
The sites that contain browser exploits and can stealthily harm a user's computer or install malware simply by visiting will be eliminated. The sites that are identified with dangerous downloads will be labeled in the search results with a warning.

Also, SearchScan will alert users to scanned sites that send unsolicited emails or inappropriately share email addresses with third parties.
While SearchScan will be on by default, users have control over how they use the feature. In preferences, users can choose to turn the feature off or choose to filter out all sites with warnings from their search results.

Other companies are also trying to improve their search offer. Last month, Google announced its plans to give a makeover to its Custom Search Business Edition by introducing Google Site Search, a new solution for website owners to make search for visitors and customers a lot easier. The service essentially aims at the same goals as its predecessor, but it’s an enhanced version of it.

Google promises to roll a hosted search solution that will increase visitor satisfaction and loyalty, showcase the most relevant products, increase website conversions and sales and reduce support costs by enhancing self-service online.

The service addresses all organizations that want to embed Google search functionality into their websites, by providing them with an easy, quick solution to create a search engine that encompasses all of the website’s main features. Google said the “date biasing” feature will be at the administrator’s choice, as they can enable and disable it at any time, as well as decide the level of influence for their sites (low, medium, high or maximum).

The Ad-free option will allow site administrators to avoid ads being incorporated in search results, which is likely to influence the time visitors will spend on the website. Google Site Search is customizable, flexible, and allows categorization of search results, through refinements (labels that site administrators can apply to their websites). It is also a solution to help users narrow their search and get more targeted results.

Also earlier this month Google, Adobe and Yahoo teamed up to offer multimedia Web sites using the Flash format (SWF) a much simpler way of getting their information across, with a full index capacity of their Flash content.

Up until now, the search engines presented the pictures, the texts and the links from a certain site but were not able to provide information about the rest of the Web site’s content. This is caused by the changing state of the material, which becomes elusive to the search engines.

Both Google and Yahoo will be using Adobe Systems’ Flash Player technology in order to properly detect and present the rich Internet applications. Actually, Google already implemented the optimized Flash Player in its search engine and as soon as Yahoo reaches the conclusion that the test results are satisfactory, it will also immediately update its Yahoo! Search application.

In the past two months, Microsoft also announced various initiatives aimed to improve its search service and the user experience.

After it dropped the bid for Yahoo (although there are rumors that the Redmond-based software giant still seeks some partners to buy the Internet portal) Microsoft seems to lack a clear strategy to achieve its goal.

Its latest acquisition, Powerset, is not just another search engine, but a platform for how the search will look in the future. In May, Powerset announced the public availability of its latest beta product, a search engine that delivers query results based on meaning, rather than words, delivering valid answers and improving the search experience.

Powerset’s deal follows after Microsoft announced last month that it will open a new R&D search center in Europe, which aims to understand the search habits of the Europeans.