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Lycos.com has become the second major search engine to launch a news-only search option, aimed at letting readers track down breaking news on chosen topics.
Lycos has joined Google in offering users the ability to specifically search for news articles across a wide range of topics and publications. Lycos' service re-indexes 3,000 on-line news sites every minute, while Google's scans more than 100 news sites at least once an hour.
The service allows Lycos news engine users to enter a term in the search box and then click on the "news" tab that appears on the results page. Unlike Google, Lycos has yet to set up a separate site for the service. Users access Lycos' offering via the portal's standard search function.
Google introduced a trial version of its news search service in March. The gives users the ability to search for articles from 100 English language on-line publications such as the BBC, CNN and the Washington Post. Google has said it will consider adding additional sites to the list depending on user feedback.
Both Lycos and Google are responding to an increasing desire among Internet users to access news via search engines. A recent Forrester report found that while 42 percent of Internet users read news somewhere on the Web every month, less than one in four do so from a newspaper Web site and fewer than one in five from magazine sites. "Internet users value news, but not enough to visit a newspaper or magazine's Web sites very often," said Forrester analyst Lisa Allen.
According to Forrester, many Internet users are going to portals for their news, where they can find stories and articles from a range of sources. Indeed, the news channels of the leading portals garner more traffic than all but one news site, CNN.
Lycos' news search is not yet available on Lycos.co.uk. According to a spokesperson for the UK & Ireland version of the site, it is likely to be rolled out in Q4.
Lycos' new engine is part of an upgrade of its search catalogue, which now indexes around 2 billion Web pages every nine days, up from 700 million a few months ago. The engine is supplied by Norwegian company Fast Search and Transfer, which runs the search engine AlltheWeb.
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