One of Yahoo's new initiatives allows marketers and publishers to take a role in determining how they appear in search results.

On Yahoo's open search platorm, publishers may build plug-ins that improve the indexability of their websites. Users that enable a plug-in developed by a publisher will see enhanced listings from the publisher's site in their query results.

While plug-ins will not affect how high websites appear in relevant search results, they will yield more results from within the sites. Extra results may include images or reviews.

Director Amit Kumar of product management for Yahoo called the tool "very useful to searchers."

An example of how the plug-ins may structure the appearance of search results is available at the Yahoo search blog.

Yahoo will not promote plug-ins deemed irrelevant to users or that include advertising. For publishers interested in the program, tools for creating plug-ins are available at Yahoo.

Publishers already aboard include LinkedIn, BabyCenter, Yelp and CondeNet. Plug-ins go live in the next several months.