Yahoo! enables rich media embedding

Yahoo! is now allowing websites to embed games, videos and documents into their listings on the search engine's results pages.

Friday, 13 March 2009

The capability is available through SearchMonkey, Yahoo!'s open platform for developers using structured data to add value to their search listings.

Developers need to add several lines of code to their web pages to enable embedded games, videos and documents such as presentations and spreadsheets to appear as thumbnails alongside the relevant search listing.

Hulu is one site that has successfully made use of the new feature by adding a video thumbnail to a Simpsons-related search result.

Users clicking on the thumbnail will be able to watch the clip directly from the results page rather than being sent elsewhere.

"We encourage you to add markup to your sites now so our crawlers can start indexing them right away," Yahoo! stated on the Yahoo! Search blog.

"Users can already see the enhanced result for video on their search results, and we'll begin to support documents and games in the next month or so."

Yahoo! announced that it is testing rich media capabilities for its paid search ads last month.

The ads allow advertisers to display images, videos and custom search boxes.

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