Yahoo Gets Close and Personal

Internet giant Yahoo is introducing new search engine tools that will enable users to create personal folders and share their favorite links with others.

My Yahoo Search, still in test mode, lets searchers save their search results into personalized categories results with notes that then can be searched. It also lets users block certain results in an effort to reduce so-called search spam of irrelevant results that appear in search indexes. Through this new personal search service visitors will be able to create their own Web index that will allow them to save search results with notes and block individual websites from appearing in future searches. The new tools includes the ability to categorize saved searches and share their results through e-mail or “RSS” (Really Simple Syndication).

The personalized search tools take a similar tack as Ask Jeeves, which this month added a My Jeeves feature that lets users save and search Internet sites. Google has tested a personalized search feature, and Amazon has introduced a personalized search engine, A9.com.

My Yahoo Search requires users to log in using their Yahoo identification and password. Each search result includes the ability to save, save with a note, share or block.