SearchMonkey lets developers write software that augments Yahoo’s search results, for example offering ratings by movie titles or addresses, phone numbers, and maps next to restaurants. A more elaborate option involves building an “infobar” around the result that can let the user expand it into what amounts to a miniature Web page.

Another caveat: Using SearchMonkey technology isn’t necessarily snappy. For example, I enabled the Amazon SearchMonkey add-on that shows Amazon product details for relevant searches. The Yahoo search result showed as fast as before, but it took a few seconds sometimes to show the extra Amazon information below. (Also, the Amazon add-on integration leaves something to be desired, I think.)

It remains to be seen whether SearchMonkey will ignite developer interest and help Yahoo reclaim search query market share lost to leader Google, but some programmers are getting involved. For example, a SearchMonkey add-on that shows rankings for Firefox plug-ins was added Thursday.

If you want to try Yahoo’s SearchMonkey technology to spruce up your Web search results, the Internet company has launched a beta version of its Yahoo Search Gallery featuring plug-ins from LinkedIn, Yelp, Epicurious, Last.fm, IMDB, and a few dozen others.

Three SearchMonkey extensions, all developed by Yahoo’s own search programmers, are enabled by default for Yahoo search: a video player that lets people watch videos within the search results, a Yahoo Travel infobar that shows detailed hotel information, and a Flickr viewer to show images from the Yahoo photo-sharing site.

The LinkedIn option seems like a good idea to me, so I enabled it. However, for reasons I haven’t dug into, I’m not actually seeing the LinkedIn SearchMonkey add-ons in my results. Maybe it’s just me.

So far, the most popular SearchMonkey add-on is one from LinkedIn that adds details from LinkedIn profiles to the search results.

(Credit:
Yahoo)

This SearchMonkey add-on shows star ratings for Firefox browser plug-ins.

CNET Blog Network blogger Harrison Hoffman would like to see SearchMonkey-augmented results rise in the search rankings, but I disagree. I don’t want a poor search result artificially elevated just because a fancy wrapper can make it more useful.

Clicking an extension gallery option takes the user to a page that shows a sample result, a button to enable the option, and a link to try it out in a live search. Users can choose to enable or disable various add-ons.