Remember SearchMonkey, our new open initiative to let developers and site owners mashup helpful data with Yahoo! Search results? If you want to be among the first to experience these enhanced results, you need to check out the latest element in the SearchMonkey rollout: The Yahoo! Search Gallery. This beta feature lets you choose the content modules that will appear in your results. (Did I mention it's in beta? We had a few bumps out of the gate but have since addressed them.)

Here’s how to personalize it: After logging in and conducting a search in any Yahoo! Search box, you’ll notice a “Customize” link to the right of the yellow “Search” box. Select “Browse Gallery” in the pull-down menu and you’ll be taken to a list that, at last count, includes nearly 40 different options for enhancing Yahoo! Search. For example, if you select “Yelp,” your search results will include things like a preview of photos, reviews, rating, address, and phone number. If you select “Epicurious,” your search for pumpkin pie will include links to specific recipes from the popular foodie site. By selecting “Facebook,” any time you search for a name, you’ll get a thumbnail of that person’s public Facebook profile right within your search results. Other great enhancement options include LinkedIn, Howstuffworks.com, MTV.com, WebMD, Amazon, and a host of Yahoo! properties like Finance, Real Estate, Health, Autos, Local and Shopping.

We’ve set a few initial defaults for you with Yahoo! Video, Flickr and Yahoo! Travel and we’ll add to that list once we see which applications are most useful and popular. For the time being, if you want to see SearchMonkey results when you search, you need to add Enhanced Results and Infobars from the Search Gallery.

And, of course, this is just the beginning. It’s only been two weeks since we unleashed developer creativity on all of the possibilities SearchMonkey has to offer. There are plenty more innovations to come and a bunch of applications in the works.

Check out our Search Blog for more skinny and go here if you’re a developer ready for some monkey business.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor