Yahoo debuts personal search engine

SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo Inc. on Tuesday started a test of its personal search engine amid a fierce battle with industry leader Google Inc. and others to provide exactly the information people seek.

Better Web search results also promise to deliver more targeted advertising and bigger revenues for fast-growing search providers.

Yahoo said its My Web search service will enable registered users to create their own search archive by saving their favorite Web pages as well as their search results and search history.

Users also can share their favorite Web sites via e-mail, instant messenger or the company's new networking tool Yahoo 360, which is in limited testing.

With Yahoo's new service, users can also annotate Web pages and publish shared pages via RSS feeds, a tool for syndicating information to a wide audience.

Yahoo said My Web, which is available at http://search.yahoo.com or through its toolbar http://beta.toolbar.com, is a new product that uses ideas from technology rolled out six months ago in the company's personalized search portion of My Yahoo.

Earlier this month, Google debuted the test of its personalized search service called My Search History.

Ask Jeeves Inc., which has agreed to be bought by IAC/InterActiveCorp, and Amazon.com's Web search unit A9 also have rolled out competing products.