Yahoo Search Monkey will be debuting soon, coinciding with the Weather Report outlined on the Yahoo Blog. Yahoo Search Monkey is a new open-source application programming interface (API) that will enhance the search experience for visitors as well as website owners.

Website owners will be able to ratings, reviews, images, deep links and other data directly to the Yahoo results pages through the company’s Machined Learned Ranking technology. For instance, a restaurant may include data such a photos, reviews and location in the search engine results pages making the SERPs much more visually appealing and offering more in-depth information.

Gone will be the days of the simple title, abstract and link, unless of course the user wants this simplicity. According to Yahoo, its Search Monkey features can be turned off or on at will, giving visitors a choice of how much information they want to see on the results pages.

One important aspect of Search Monkey that Yahoo hasn’t addressed yet is the real estate on the SERPs pages. With all the new data, will each listing be larger and if so will the top 10 rankings fall into the realm of a top 5 or top 8 perhaps? No matter, perhaps, Search Monkey is just what Yahoo needs to get out of the money doldrums and back on track to take on Google in a more meaningful way.

While the jury is still out on whether visitors will go ape over Search Monkey (or whether they will just throw pooh at it), one thing is for certain and that is that Yahoo needs to make some bold moves to get back into the search game. Perhaps Search Monkey is such a bold move.

Filed under: Yahoo