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Yahoo is availing its search technologies and infrastructure to parties that want to improve their site-specific search engine.

The initiative, BOSS — an acronym for "build your own search service" — was announced in July. Its premise is to give consumer web businesses with "unique assets" (e.g., extensive user/social data, URL metadata, novel technologies) the ability to provide users with a "vertical lens," Yahoo said.

TechCrunch was the first to deploy the Yahoo-powered search engine across its sites. It is "considerably more powerful than WordPress’s default search capabilities," the tech site wrote in a post about the launch.

How it works:

• Real-time indexing of proprietary content. When content is added or a user comment is submitted, the search index almost immediately reflects changes.
• Customized ranking. Web results are not listed in reverse chronological order; they rise to the top based on their relevance to the query.
• Search refinements, like range queries, let users fine-tune searches or browse specific content. For instance, a TechCrunch reader could whittle down a query on Twitter to see only posts written by Michael Arrington, only most popular articles (determined by number of comments), or only related companies founded in the past year.
• The interface features an image for each result (when available), making it easier to identify pages visually.
• Blending of web and proprietary content on a single search display.

Perhaps most exciting for publishers that operate multiple sites, BOSS allows users to search across all of them in a single query. For TechCrunch, this means that all of the content from its English-speaking blogs (CrunchGear, MobileCrunch, TechCrunch UK, TechCrunchIT, Gillmor Gang) is accessible in one shot.

Yahoo's search API is currently invite-only, but companies that feel their search concept is "truly innovative and scalable" can submit a beta request directly to Yahoo via email (bosscustom [at] yahoo-inc [dot] com).

Last month, rival Google made it possible for site publishers to index new site content almost immediately. Such content only improves on-site search; publishers must still wait for search spiders to index new content for Google.com.