Yahoo! Search Subscriptions is an interesting concept

Web is wider than what it feels like. General search engines like Google and Yahoo! offer us the best in searching solutions for the content available for free on the Internet. However, the problem with the Internet is that everyone is free to say what they want to. The information can be unreliable and even worse inaccurate. That is why sometimes users have to rely on resources, which are paid for and are from sources, which are more trustworthy than general sites on the internet.

Take for example MSN Encarta. It is a massive encyclopedia offering reliable content but it not available for free. Microsoft owns it and they have the power to give excerpts from this resource in their search results on the MSN Search Engine. However, there are tons more sources out their locked away from the general user who never comes to know that it exists and is available for a fee.

This is where the latest innovative concept from the Yahoo! comes in. Yahoo! Search Subscription now allows paid for content providers to let Yahoo! index their pages and display along with the search results on the Yahoo! Search Engine. Of course, the end user would still have to be a member of the publishing website to get access to the whole content but it makes the content available to the masses. Users can then pay for the content and get access to the information, which is important to him.

However, it requires the content providers to contact Yahoo! and get them serp their websites to make the content accessible. As the concept becomes more popular, we expect to see more than just a handful of websites offering their services through the Yahoo! Search Engine. Both the user and the content provider benefits as a result and the web become more accessible.

Yahoo! for now is making available content from the following resources in their Subscription Search service: Consumer Reports, FT.com (60 days), Forrester Research, IEEE publications, New England Journal of Medicine and TheStreet.com.