Users of Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo's search engine will now find more detailed results from user- generated encyclopedia Wikipedia, thanks to a new application built on Yahoo's SearchMonkey open development platform that the Web pioneer turned live today on the 8th anniversary of Wikipedia's launch. The changes aim to help bring users of Yahoo's search engine directly to the most relevant portion of a Wikipedia page. Four Deep Links And Expanded Overview Text For Wikipedia Results One of the first initiatives to launch since naming Carol Bartz as Yahoo's new chief executive Tuesday, the enhanced Wikipedia search results have given users of the world's second most-used search engine  as many as four links to different sections of individual entries from Wikipedia, a small preview of an image from the online encyclopedia if one is available, and a more detailed snippet of writing from each Wikipedia article, Yahoo announced Thursday in a message posted to its search engine blog. Yahoo and other search engine firms such as Google and Microsoft frequently return several links to the not-for-profit Wikipedia Web site among the first page of search results listed, despite ongoing concerns from educators and other critics who view the openness of Wikipedia's editing system as being vulnerable to spreading misinformation. Wikipedia has encountered difficulties due to its open nature, including the ability to make certain entries and edits anonymously, with several high profile cases involving either malicious or prankish postings of incorrect information coming to light over the past several years. Despite these concerns Yahoo has made Wikipedia the sixth Web property to receive the enhanced search listings on its search engine site, joining business social networking site LinkedIn, Zagat, local search and directory Citysearch, local business review site Yelp and Yahoo's own local business and services site, Yahoo Local. Sixth Web Property To Get Default SearchMonkey Treatment "Starting today, the Wikipedia Enhanced Result will automatically appear in the search results," Yahoo said Thursday. The SearchMonkey application was built by incorporating features from several similar  efforts from third-party developers and building it into Yahoo search by default, Yahoo said. "We’ve seen a handful of Wikipedia Enhanced Results and Infobars built in the past few months. We gathered the best elements from each and built a new app," Yahoo said in the Thursday announcement. Yahoo's SearchMonkey lets Web site owners add new types of information such as photos, addresses, related stories, reviews, contact information and ratings to the basic descriptions currently shown on Yahoo's search engine listings. From a developer perspective the platform is comprised of several tools, application programming interfaces (APIs) and Yahoo's own database query language, called Yahoo Query Language (YQL), with which Yahoo has looked to entice programmers seeking a way to open a two-way street between outside applications and its own services such as popular photo-sharing site Flickr and its finance, sports and e-mail features. Yahoo Adds More Wikipedia Content To Search Results With SearchMonkey On Thursday Yahoo said that although the new enhanced Wikipedia search result listings were turned on by default, users of its search engine could turn the Wikipedia SearchMonkey application off using a setting on a customer preferences page, where they could also choose one of the several third-party applications Yahoo modeled its version on. Other similar SearchMonkey applications built for Yahoo's search engine were available for Web sites such as the CIA World Factbook, HowStuffWorks, and the online dictionary of Merriam-Webster, Yahoo said. When Yahoo first launched the SearchMonkey platform, which it had been working on since September 2007, Yahoo said that it hoped to form a vast array of new connections between Yahoo's services and those on the Web properties of company's such as Netflix, eBay and CNN. In December 2007 Internet search leader Google launched Knol, a service meant to offer some of the same features as Wikipedia with several important differences. Knol differs from Wikipedia in not allowing anyone to freely edit information, instead limiting changes to people who have had their alterations or additions approved by the original author. Related Links :
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