Yahoo changes news site

SAN FRANCISCO: Internet media company Yahoo Inc. late on Wednesday revamped its news site, giving it a new look and features to help users delve deeper into subjects and to personalize headlines.

Yahoo News, the most visited online news site in the United States, both competes and has partnerships with many sites run by news organizations. It also faces Web search leader Google Inc. as an up-and-coming rival.

The new version of Yahoo News aims for a "cleaner" and more organized delivery of headlines and news content, Yahoo said.

The redesigned site also includes Yahoo's YQ search technology that enables users to pull up search results related to key phrases or names in stories -- without leaving the page.

Users of the new site also can add RSS feeds, which allow information providers to send headlines broadly across the Internet. In cases where the RSS provider is not a Yahoo partner, users will be redirected off Yahoo News.

RSS, popularly referred to as really simple syndication, is a tool for distributing information to a wide audience.

The new site, which offers numerous other new features, also lets users send stories via instant message stories in addition to sending them via e-mail, a feature that Yahoo has long offered.

Unlike Google -- which uses software to search the Web for and prioritize news stories and as a result has occasionally had copyright conflicts with news organizations -- Yahoo has agreements with providers whose stories appear on its human editor-driven site.

Yahoo News also keeps users on its site while they are reading stories, whereas Google News sends users to the sites carrying the stories it features.

Yahoo has limited advertising on its site, whereas Google has none.