The studies carried out by online marketing companies point out that the majority of Internet surfers use it for what is called individual market research.

Sounds pretty technical, but actually the meaning is simple: when a user wants to buy a certain product or to employ a certain service, he/she will go on the Internet to search information about it: reviews, technical specifications, other users' opinions.

It didn't take long before somebody grasped the full potential of the concept and developed a special search engine: Become.com.

Become.com returns as results to your inquiries web pages that contain presentations of the searched product. For example, if you search iPod on Become, the first result offered by the search engine will be the same as the one returned by Google: the player's section on Apple's site. But unlike Google, the other results returned by Become will be focused on iPod tests, reviews etc.

There's no point in using Become.com if you're not searching for a specific product. The searches carried out by using general terms will return the same results as Google, but for instance, ZdNet's HP Nx9010 presentation was on the second page in Google, while Become included it in the first five results.

Like many other search engines, Become.com is also generating income from sponsored links, displayed in right-side of the page with results.

Become.com is ideal if you're trying to find references on a product, but since the service is beta, the indexed pages are not the most recent ones. For example, a search for GeForce 7800 on Become has not returned the article published by Slashdot in June or the one by Anandtech from the same month (which were accurately displayed by Google); the first result displayed by the new search engine was an article posted at the beginning of the year.

Therefore, Become.com still needs some improvements, but it's definitely the place to go if you want some interesting presentations.