Yahoo! Beefs Up Personalized Search

by Gavin O'Malley, Apr 27, 2005, 7:00 AM

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Yahoo! Inc. Tuesday announced the beta release of personalization features for its search engine. Dubbed "My Web," Yahoo! described the offering as a "personal search engine" that allows users to save, recall, and share with others on the Web online search-related information. "My Web" also lets users create a personal online archive by saving desired Web pages, search results, and a search history to "My Web."

This development comes almost exactly one week after Google released a test service called "My Search History," which tracks users' searches when they are signed on to the service, and allows them to search those pages at a later date. The two Web portals are competing tooth and nail on several fronts for Web traffic and the ad revenue it generates. Yahoo! and Google have competing versions of comparison shopping, blogging, and local search applications. And when Google launched a free e-mail service with 1 gigabyte of storage space, Yahoo! quickly countered by increasing storage for its own free e-mail service, at which point Google announced that it, in turn, would offer 2 gigabytes of free storage.

Upon Yahoo! 360's broad release in the next several weeks, tools including the folders of users' search history will be integrated with others, including e-mail, instant messenger, and the personal networking service.

"My Web is the next step in integrating search and personal search with community by giving our users an easy way to have their own personal Web search experience, which incorporates what matters to them on the Internet, and allowing them to share that experience," Tim Mayer, director of Yahoo! Search, said.

Using the beta's "Save to My Web" button on the new Yahoo! toolbar, users can save an existing Web page to their personal archive, which can be retrieved at any time by searching "My Web."

With the searching new sharing feature, users can also add notes to saved pages in order to personalize and organize the stored files. Users will be able to create files that are shared by a community, and when updated by the user, will send the update via RSS feed to everyone in the group, explained Mayer.

Yahoo! is offering an open API for the new application, which, according to a company release, enables developers to use Yahoo! data to create new products. "My Web" can also be accessed via the new beta version of the Yahoo! Toolbar.

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