I wanted to learn more about Yahoo! Shopping APIs. Here’s a Q&A with Chris Saito, Sr. Director of Product, Yahoo! Shopping.

Why is this important?
The launch of Yahoo! Shopping Web Services is part of our strategy to provide open access to Yahoo!’s network and enable developers to create new innovative apps. With the Yahoo! Shopping Web Services developers will have access to millions of product offers from thousands of merchants in our shopping search database. The products included are very comprehensive and cover apparel, computers and electronics, home and garden, books, DVDs, jewelry, and so on. So there is a lot for developers to access. Also the web service APIs are simple to use and rely on basic web standards such as HTTP and XML. It should be quick and easy for developers to get started using the APIs to build new web applications.

Why has this taken so long to come about? Does this represent a change in direction for Yahoo! Shopping or is it just part of a larger Yahoo! initiative?
We’re leading the shopping search industry by providing open, standards-based web services that any developer can utilize. This is definitely part of Yahoo!’s strategy to spur innovation on the web by providing open access to one of the largest shopping search databases. We believe that developers will benefit by having a set of powerful tools to build interesting apps, and Yahoo! will benefit by having these apps integrated with the Yahoo! network. Personally I’m looking forward to some exciting applications being developed; it’s hard to predict what people will come up with but I’m sure the apps will be very cool.

Along the same lines… I think sites like Shopping.com have had an API available for a while as they work with many distribution partners? Does this mean that we’ll see Yahoo! Shopping powering some big sites out there?
What’s great about the Yahoo! Shopping APIs is that they are open and free for any developer to use. This is pretty unique in the shopping search world. You will be seeing large sites using them, but we’re equally interested in what lots of small websites will do and the features that will be created by the collective community of amazing web developers out there.

What applications do you see developers creating? What applications are you excited about seeing (what need does this fill?)? Is anything out there already – anyone get a preview?
We’re looking for interesting e-commerce applications since the web service APIs give access to our product catalog, merchant price comparison, and merchant reviews. Some possible apps include integrated web site product search and price comparisons, mobile shopping apps, price tracking and alerts, etc. The APIs are very rich, yet simple to work with, so it will be interesting to see what developers come up with. We have released sample code as part of our software development kit on the Yahoo Developer Network and will be hosting sample applications there. We released the Shopping Web Service APIs to developers this week, so as soon as we see interesting apps we will point to them on the Yahoo Developer Network. We are also using the same web service APIs to build some very interesting applications internally at Yahoo! so stay tuned….

How many queries per day? Why that limit? Will you charge above that limit?
Use of the APIs is free and the daily limit is 5,000 queries based on each unique IP address accessing the web services. This gives developers the flexibility to build desktop clients apps and not worry about the limit. The 5000 query limit is based on a number of requests that we think are reasonable for a typical application to utilize. Developers that need to go beyond 5000 queries per day should contact us directly so we can build a closer relationship that can better benefit a large-scale site. This limit helps us identify those partners.

Is there any way to compensate the developers who drive you the traffic (you make some good money through merchant PPC bids)? eBay and Amazon APIs are important for their affiliate programs…
Currently the Shopping Web Services are for non-commercial use, so we are not collecting a PPC fee from merchants and are not compensating developers. That said, we are always looking for ways to improve the APIs and our developer programs, so this will evolve over time.

Non-commercial use? Can you clarify…
The product listings are the same ones in our Shopping search database. These do generate revenue for Yahoo! on a PPC basis when accessed through Yahoo! Shopping, but when accessed via the Web Service APIs in this developer program we are not charging merchants for clicks. And as I stated before, since we will be continually improving our APIs and developer programs, this will evolve over time.

Does this benefit merchants in any way?
Definitely. We expect that the wide variety of applications accessing the web services over time will drive a lot of additional traffic to Yahoo! Shopping’s merchants. So the web services are good news for them since the APIs will help extend the reach of the merchants across the web and on to any device.