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Stakes multiply in search wars

Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com

Published: 17 Feb 2004 15:35 GMT

Yahoo, for example, plans to overhaul its MyYahoo customised service in the first quarter, when it will also replace Google's technology with its own, according to sources familiar with the plans. For its MyYahoo pages, the company recently started testing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) that lets people aggregate news sources onto a customised Yahoo page.

A personal touch
Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Lee said that the company plans to introduce personalised search sometime this year. Such a service would likely track, with his or her permission, a visitor's physical location, personal preferences and search history to deliver more relevant results.

"Personalisation is something we're focused on, so we can provide more value to the search experience," Lee said.

Meanwhile, Google may become more portal-like with "my" territory of its own. The company recently updated a domain-name registration of the Web address "MyGoogle.com" with Network Solutions, which was first created in 2000.

Google representatives said that the company registers domain names as a matter of practice but that there is no imminent service linked to MyGoogle.com.

Google's Silverstein said the company is continuously focused on improving search, and by doing that, people will return. "The key is to make sure that the user gets what they're looking for at Google," he said. Outside of that, he would not comment specifically on developments into personalisation at Google.

Last year, Google started testing technology to deliver more localised results. It now uses "geotracking" technology to determine the physical location of a Web page, so it can better serve up results to local queries such as "San Francisco eateries."

MSN, too, has bolstered testing of its own search technology, including personalising news for visitors abroad. MSN recently updated MyMSN with improved features for cataloguing news.