Yahoo to Release Service Aimed At Making Web Searches Easier
Yahoo Inc. plans to release today a service designed to make it easier to conduct Web searches, its latest sally in the heated battle with Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to make search results more relevant for individual users.
The service, dubbed "Y!Q," uses keywords automatically extracted from Web pages to conduct Web searches and also to find related content on Yahoo's own Web sites. The search companies have long complained about the difficulty of delivering exactly the search results users want since the average search query a user enters is just a few words long. Yahoo's new service, which it plans to release on its site for test services (next.yahoo.com), partly addresses that problem by creating a list of search keywords itself based on the text a user is looking at.
If an individual is reading a news article on Yahoo's site about plans for changing Social Security, for example, clicking on a button marked "Search Related Info" generates links to several Web sites discussing the same topic. In that case, the service extracts a string of keywords including "President Bush" and "Social Security" from the original article and uses them as the basis for the new search. The service works on sites other than Yahoo's own and allows users to add or exclude search terms from those generated automatically.
Yahoo's new service is an incremental development in the race with Google and Microsoft to increase search market share. But it's one of the first recent examples of Yahoo's taking the lead on its main rivals in offering new search functions since it released its own search-engine technology about a year ago. Search start-up Blinkx can also conduct searches based on a Web page or text a user is looking at. Microsoft on Tuesday expanded the release of its own new search-engine technology.
The "Y!Q" service also highlights Yahoo's strategy of linking more closely its different services and Web sites, making it easier for users to move between them.
雅虎将推出使网络搜索更加便利的新服务
雅虎公司(Yahoo Inc.)计划今日公布一项旨在使网络搜索更易于进行的服务，这是雅虎在与Google Inc.和微软公司(Microsoft Corp.)所展开的白热化竞争中最新推出的项目，其目的在于使搜索结果更符合单个用户的需求。
这项名为'Y!Q'的服务能够利用从网页中自动摘录的关键词进行网络搜索，还能利用关键词在雅虎自身网站上查找相关内容。长期以来，搜索公司一直抱怨称，由于用户在通常情况下输入的搜索问题仅仅是几个单词，因此很难准确向用户提供其需要的搜索结果。雅虎最新推出的这项服务在一定程度上解决了这一问题，方法是雅虎网站会根据用户正在阅读的文章内容自动列出搜索关键词。
此外，'Y!Q'服务还突显了雅虎将其他服务和网站更加紧密地联系起来的战略，从而更加方便用户在两者之间进行转换。
