Yahoo makes first steps towards semantic searching

Yahoo has released the first details about the recently announced Open Search Platform. The company announced that it will open its web search result lists to website operators, allowing them to determine which content is displayed when their site is listed instead of displaying automatically generated summaries.

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This will require a number of micro formats, for example hCalendar, hCard or hReview. Yahoo intends to co-operate with the web community to develop further standards for structured data. By using semantic mark up, the contents of the LinkedIn social network, for example, could become more accessible via Yahoo.

The meta data is designed to improve the semantics of the web as a whole. While there has been remarkable progress made toward understanding the semantics of web content, the benefits of a data web have not reached the mainstream consumer, said the statement. What's missing according to Yahoo is a semantic killer application for end users. The company believes that web search can be that killer application.

(trk)