Web Search Documentation for Yahoo! Search Web Services

Support & Community

The Web Search service is discussed on the yws-search-general mailing list.

Request URL

http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/V1/webSearch

Request parameters

See information on constructing REST queries

Parameter	Value	Description
appid	string (required)	The application ID. See Application IDs for more information.
query	string (required)	The query to search for (UTF-8 encoded). This query supports the full search language of Yahoo! Search, including meta keywords. For details on constructing queries, see Search Tips.
region	string: default us	The regional search engine on which the service performs the search. For example, region=uk will give you the search engine at uk.search.yahoo.com. Supported Regions.
type	all (default), any, or phrase	The kind of search to submit: all returns results with all query terms. any returns results with one or more of the query terms. phrase returns results containing the query terms as a phrase.
results	integer: default 10, max 100	The number of results to return.
start	integer: default 1	The starting result position to return (1-based). The finishing position (start + results - 1) cannot exceed 1000.
format	any (default), html, msword, pdf, ppt, rss, txt, xls	Specifies the kind of file to search for.
adult_ok	no value (default), or 1	Specifies whether to allow results with adult content. Enter a 1 to allow adult content.
similar_ok	no value (default), or 1	Specifies whether to allow multiple results with similar content. Enter a 1 to allow similar content.
language	string: default no value (all languages)	The language the results are written in. Supported Languages.
country	string: default no value	The country in which to restrict your search results. Only results on web sites within this country are returned. Supported Country Codes.
site	string: default no value	A domain to restrict your searches to (e.g. www.yahoo.com). You may submit up to 30 values (site=www.yahoo.com&site=www.cnn.com).
subscription	string: default no value	Any subscriptions to premium content that should also be searched. You may submit multiple values. Supported Subscription Codes.
license	any (default), cc_any, cc_commercial, cc_modifiable	The Creative Commons license that the contents are licensed under. You may submit multiple values (e.g. license=cc_commercial&license=cc_modifiable).
output	string: xml (default), json, php	The format for the output. If json is requested, the results will be returned in JSON format. If php is requested, the results will be returned in Serialized PHP format.
callback	string	The name of the callback function to wrap around the JSON data. The following characters are allowed: A-Z a-z 0-9 . [] and _. If output=json has not been requested, this parameter has no effect. More information on the callback can be found in the Yahoo! Developer Network JSON Documentation.

Sample Request Url: http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/V1/webSearch?appid=YahooDemo&query=madonna&results=2

Response fields

The schema document for this service response is located at http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/V1/WebSearchResponse.xsd

Field	Description
ResultSet	Contains all of the query responses. Has attributes: totalResultsAvailable: The number of query matches in the database. totalResultsReturned: The number of query matches returned. This may be lower than the number of results requested if there were fewer total results available. firstResultPosition: The position of the first result in the overall search.
Result	Contains each individual response.
Title	The title of the web page.
Summary	Summary text associated with the web page.
Url	The URL for the web page.
ClickUrl	The URL for linking to the page. See URL linking for more information.
MimeType	The MIME type of the page
ModificationDate	The date the page was last modified, in unix timestamp format.
Cache	The URL of the cached result, and its size in bytes.

Sample response

The following is a sample response for the query madonna:

<ResultSet xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="urn:yahoo:srch" xsi:schemaLocation="urn:yahoo:srch http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/V1/WebSearchResponse.xsd" totalResultsAvailable="3610652" totalResultsReturned="2" firstResultPosition="1">
  <Result>
    <Title>Madonna</Title>
    <Summary>official site, with news, music, media, and fan club.  Includes information on Madonna's 2004 Re-Invention tour.</Summary>
    <Url>http://www.madonna.com/</Url>
    <ClickUrl>http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=madonna/v=2/XP=yws/SID=e/l=WS1/R=1/SS=33338411/H=1/IPC=us/SHE=0/SIG=11b8pqr3e/EXP=1106183712/*-http%3A//www.madonna.com/</ClickUrl>
  </Result>
  <Result>
    <Title>MTV.com: Madonna</Title>
    <Summary>Madonna profile page, featuring news, video and audio, photo gallery, and biography.</Summary>
    <Url>http://www.mtv.com/bands/az/madonna/artist.jhtml</Url>
    <ClickUrl>http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=madonna/v=2/XP=yws/SID=e/l=WS1/R=2/SS=96305700/H=1/IPC=us/SHE=0/SIG=124gl5nub/EXP=1106183712/*-http%3A//www.mtv.com/bands/az/madonna/artist.jhtml</ClickUrl>
  </Result>
</ResultSet>

Rate Limit

The Web Search service is limited to 5,000 queries per IP address per day. See information on rate limiting and our Usage Policy to learn about acceptable uses and how to request additional queries.

Errors

The Web Search service returns the standard errors. There are no service-specific errors.

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