New Tools Enhance Searching.

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Billions of Web pages are indexed by powerful search engines, often giving you what you want in seconds. But sometimes a search yields too many hits to digest or fails to come up with anything useful. Below are some of the recent improvements made by prominent search engines, notably the 3 most commonly used â€" Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's MSN Search.

• Microsoft launched a revamped MSN Search in early 2005. It draws on such resources as Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia and MSN Music, and may precede the usual list of Web links with a "direct answer" to the search question. Depending on what is asked, the answer might be a single word, a definition, a capsule biography, or a calculation result.

Aerial or satellite photographs of the earth's surface have been offered before, but 2005 saw major new initiatives in this area that supplemented search-engine mapping features. Google came out with Google Maps, based largely on the imaging/mapping offerings of Keyhole, a company it acquired in 2004. This product presents satellite views of streets with local data overlays. Google also released a downloadable program called Google Earth that works with Google Maps and allows for angled views of streets and relief maps (a free version can be downloaded from earth.google.com). Microsoft developed its own "Virtual Earth" service, which works much like Google Maps. Meanwhile, in early 2005, Amazon's A9 began supplementing its "yellow page" local search results for certain major cities with street-front photos of the businesses searched. The feature is called Block View because it permits the user to scroll along a block.

• In 2005 both Google and Yahoo! introduced the capability to store search histories and results online for later reference. Google dubbed its program "My Search History." Yahoo!'s, called "My Web," includes the capability to annotate saved search pages and to share pages with others. Other recent experiments by Yahoo! include new services for refining the search process. Yahoo!'s Mindset search allows the user to specify whether the search results should be more commercial in character or more informational.
• Some other new features were a little farther in the future. Google Print, which will take years to implement, searches not websites but the contents of printed works, and the results include information on where copies of the works may be obtained. In addition to publishers, several major libraries have agreed to let Google scan books for this program. Limited access to the content of printed books is also available through the A9 search engine introduced by Amazon.com in 2004; A9 permits users to make notes in a "search diary."
• Many software developers and hobbyists co-opt the output of a search engine like Google or Yahoo! for their own purposes or improve on it in some way. Housingmaps.com uses Google maps to show locations of sale and rental offerings posted in the popular Craigslist (www.craigslist.org) for more than two dozen U.S. and Canadian metropolitan areas. Scroogle removes ads from the search results on Google (www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm) or Yahoo! (www.scroogle.org/scraper7.html).

For more information about new search features based on Yahoo!, visit nexl.yahoo.com and research.yahoo.com. For a rundown on Google's beta projects, go to labs.google.com. MSN Search's home page is at search, msn.com.