Stakes multiply in search wars

Search is integral to all the players' plans, because it's become a valuable source of ad revenue -- an expected $2bn (£1.06bn) this year -- and it serves as a jumping-off point to numerous other services, including shopping, news, classified ads and personals listings.

But Web surfers have long been trained to explore multiple sites, thanks to pages at Yahoo and others that aggregate links to many Web services. Now that search-related advertising has proven lucrative, they want to encourage exclusivity.

"That notion of bebopping around the Web is ingrained," Stein said. "But now they want you to connect yourself and never stray."

To inspire loyalty, all the major providers are cooking up ways to make their search services "sticky," or encourage repeated, long visits. Web portals have long sought to make their sites sticky through applications such as email, news and discussion groups. But now that mandate has turned to search, given that more dollars are up for grabs.

MSN and Yahoo are focusing on new personalisation and customisation features. And Google, which is widely expected to go public this year, is likely to counter those steps, industry watchers say.

"Personalisation is the primary way, outside of brand loyalty, to keep people," said Jim Pitkow, president of news search service Moreover. "And it is the name of the game right now.

"The minute providers start collecting valuable personal information on searcher preferences, that will make it hard to switch."

Yahoo and MSN are in the best position to tap their relationships with registered users to turn on personalised search, industry watchers say. For example, Yahoo could ask a registered user if personal data can be used to deliver more relevant search results to that person. Still, privacy concerns could play a role in such features.

Toolbars are one thing all the providers have tried to use recently to win over visitors. Yahoo, Google and MSN are offering downloadable toolbars to search directly from the browser. Also, Google and others are embedding shortcuts for weather, flight information and package tracking into search results. But much more is being planned.