Yahoo aims to ‘Boss’ search engine battle

Yahoo has launched a unique digital marketing strategy that will provide third party developers with access to its search technology.

In exchange for allowing firms to develop their own custom-built search engines free of charge, Yahoo will display its adverts alongside the results.

Prabhakar Raghavan, chief strategist for Yahoo Search, suggests that the new BOSS application will help break the deadlock in search engine marketing.

He said: “The search market is generally limited to three major search engines to drive innovation and growth.

“BOSS opens up the playing field for developers and companies to disrupt the search market, become principals in search, and build new web search experiences that offer more choice for users.”

Google currently commands around 90 per cent of the UK search engine market and attracts the bulk of online marketing strategies over its lesser-used rival.

The unveiling of BOSS follows the launch of another search marketing innovation from Yahoo, SearchMonkey, allowing users to receive more information in their search results.

However, despite being received well in principle, SearchMonkey has been widely criticised for not being very easy to use.