The other day Yahoo launched a beta version of its new Yahoo Search Subscriptions service, which lets users search a number of subscription content sources and the web from one search box.
The new service offers users the ability to search for personal subscription content found in the “deep web” as they call it. This includes millions of access-restricted Web sites containing content that search engines can’t usually access. For now, Yahoo is offering the service in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Yahoo! Search Subscriptions isn’t a new idea. The search engine giant is touting the new service as a revolutionary way for users to search subscription-based sites for information. The fact is the concept is an old one. Google has been indexing pay-based subscription sites for years.
Yahoo’s new offering will pull up information from the “deep Web”, but users of the service still need to pay to read. The service – as it stands now – indexes seven subscription sites. The company expects to include many more sites in the future, but they will all cost money to read.
Among the sites included in Yahoo’s Search Subscriptions service are ConsumerReports.org, The Wall Street Journal Online, TheStreet.com, The New England Journal of Medicine, IEEE and Forrester Research, and subscription content from Financial Times.
Yahoo said that content from Factiva, LexisNexis AlaCarte! pay-as-you-go, Thomson Gale and ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) will be available within the next few weeks.
“We are in the very early stages of providing our users with access to the deep web through Yahoo! Search Subscriptions and over the coming months we plan to expand this program to further accommodate our users’ wide range of interests,” said Yahoo! Search’s vice president of product management Eckart Walther.
Chris is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest ebusiness news.