Yahoo upgrades personal web search offering

Hot on the heels of Google’s entry into the personal search space, Yahoo has renamed and upgraded its personal web search service. Now called “My Web” (it was My Yahoo Search before), it allows users to save, annotate and search Web pages in a personal archive. Users can also have Yahoo automatically compile a searchable archive of the Web pages they’ve clicked on. The service is more tightly integrated with regular Yahoo search. The original My Yahoo Search required users to login to a separate section of the Yahoo network. My Web is available from the Yahoo Search page and as a button on the Yahoo toolbar.

The press release is below…

Launch of ï¿½My Webï¿½ Beta Provides Users with Personal Search Engine, Search History and Integrated Sharing Tools

SUNNYVALE, Calif. April 27, 2005 ï¿½ Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today introduced the beta release of My Web from Yahoo! Search (available at http://search.yahoo.com). My Web is a ï¿½personal search engineï¿½ that extends usersï¿½ existing Yahoo! Search experience by providing a simple way to save, recall and share online information with friends and colleagues. My Web enables users to create their own personal online archive by saving their favorite pages, search results, and search history to My Web. In addition, users can share their information with friends and colleagues via integrated tools such as email, instant messenger, and personal networking provided by Yahoo!ï¿½s new Yahoo! 360ï¿½ tool.

ï¿½Yahoo! Search is focused on providing innovative, useful technologies that enable people to find, use, share, and expand knowledge,ï¿½ said Dr. Qi Lu, vice president of engineering for Yahoo! Search. ï¿½My Web is the next step in our vision of integrating search, personal search and community by providing users an easy way to have their own personal web search experience that incorporates the best of the Web and what matters most to them.ï¿½

The new and improved My Web beta leverages the extensive user feedback generated from the successful launch of Yahoo!ï¿½s search history product in October 2004, and includes key new features that provide the user with greater control and accessibility for their personal search experience. New features include:

Persistent ï¿½Search Memoryï¿½ That Enables Users to Easily Save and Recall Any Information on the Web

ï¿½ Automatically save and manage search history from Yahoo! Search for easy recall

ï¿½ Save an exact copy of any Web page with one click to a userï¿½s personal archive

ï¿½ Find any saved page instantly by searching My Web

ï¿½ Use the ï¿½Save to My Webï¿½ button on the new Yahoo! Toolbar to save any Web page currently being viewed

ï¿½ Instantly populate My Web by importing IE and Yahoo! bookmarks as saved pages in My Web

Ability to Share and Organize Favorite Web Sites and Pages with Online Communities ï¿½ Friends, Family, Colleagues

ï¿½ Add notes to saved pages to add knowledge to search results (e.g. ï¿½This restaurant has the best martinisï¿½)

ï¿½ Share information via email, Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! 360 (Y!360 integration will be activated in the coming weeks)

ï¿½ Create a public page of favorite saved pages (i.e. link blog)

ï¿½ Publish shared pages via RSS feeds so people can subscribe to favorites

Open APIs Enable Rapid Development of Custom Personal Search Applications

ï¿½ My Web open application programming interface (API) enables developers to use Yahoo! data to create new products, available at: http://developer.yahoo.net/myweb/V1/listFolders.html

ï¿½ Support for the emerging ï¿½attention.xmlï¿½ specification to enable interoperability with other services

My Web can be accessed through Yahoo! Search at http://search.yahoo.com as well as via the new beta version of the Yahoo! Toolbar, available at http://beta.toolbar.com.

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