After throwing it open for Beta testers in April, the Yahoo Open Search Platform has made its way to Yahoo search results starting July 31.

Yahoo Open Search, also known as Search Monkey Widgets, are third party applications developed by web masters and site owners who wish to enhance search results by adding images, rating and other add-ons to Yahoo search results - pertaining to their respective web sites. This is usually done in order to drive more traffic to their website and to make users click through at rates higher than normal. In other words, it is a kind of a colorful advertisement, on pages filled with black & white ads.

The widgets include options to rate, view images, look for reviews and to send the link to a friend - all under one search result.

Until July 31st, the widgets had to be added manually for users from Yahoo Search Gallery to be able to use them. However, starting August 1, TechCrunch has observed that the selected widget enhanced search results are available even for users who have not chosen to use them. These widgets seem to have been "enabled" automatically.

If you are the kind who prefers the old look, you can remove these widgets and have the results served to you the old way. We did check out some of the search results and found the widgets to be mostly useful. However, they are restricted to the few sites that have chosen to add these widgets.