Yahoo launches My Web personal search management tool

By Steve Malone

Posted on 28 Apr 2005 at 11:37

Yahoo! has introduced a new tool that allows users to manage their searches so they can be retrieved at a later date. The tool, known as My Web, is being offered as a public beta service from the Yahoo! site.

The new tool comes only days after Google unveiled its own 'My Search History' tool which offers remarkably similar features. One might almost suspect that their engineers drink in the same bars. However, the Yahoo! tool appears more extensive.

Touted as being 'better than bookmarks', the new tool allows the user to add a particular site to a 'my web' page or to the Yahoo! toolbar for retrieval later. The company says that it's possible to save any number of pages with the ability to save both an exact copy of the page and a link so that the information you want is always there and does not change if the page does.

In order to help manage the list of results, Yahoo! lets you browse past My Web results, perform a text search, or scan through 'My Search History' to look through the catalogue of all previous searches. As with the Google tool, the My Search History feature only works when a user is logged in or it can be turned off and you can simply select to save searches manually.

Yahoo! doesn't do anything at the moment without an eye to building it's communities through sharing information. Sure enough, My Web allows subscribers to create categories of pages and share them with other users via email, instant messenger and RSS. The company promises that it will be integrated with the Yahoo! 360 community soon.

Yahoo has also revamped its Yahoo News Service. The new service is easier to use with a tabbed format for major categories such as world, business, sports, entertainment and technology. Unlike Google News which takes its feeds from thousands of different sources, Yahoo! has specific deals with the major news agencies such as Reuters, AP and AFP which recently sued Google for allowing its material to appear on Google News. There is also material from the other major US-based sources ranging from the Washington Post and USA Today to specialist sources such as SiliconValley.com and InfoWorld.