Yahoo is one of the most popular search engines on the internet, representing one of the most powerful rivals for Google, the company that provides the best search engine. Because the rivalry between the two companies is forcing them to improve their solutions, the firms are continuously trying to increase the performance offered by their products. Recently, Google granted multiple patents that enable the search giant to include new technologies into their solutions, representing a clear sign that the company is looking to improve its solutions. Last year represented a strong crisis for Yahoo that was sustained by multiple employees departures and an internal reorganization announced by one of the directors.

This year, the giant portal tried to revamp the company by acquiring several companies meant to help improve Yahoo's solutions. In December, some bloggers also issued some rumors saying that the company wants to buy Metacafe, a video service similar to YouTube that will be able to challenge Google's solution. Today, another sign that says Yahoo is looking to improve its search technologies was published, after the company granted a new patent.

"The present invention is directed towards systems and methods for using community annotations to content items as anchortext for search and index purposes. The method according to one embodiment comprises generating one or more items of personalized information by a user for storage in a user profile, the one or more items of personalized information associated with one or more content items, the one or more content items and the one or more items of personalized information comprising one or more words.

One or more items of personalized information is selected from a given user profile. The method further comprises indexing the one or more words in the one or more content items and the one or more words in the selected personalized information into an index, identifying one or more content items responsive to on or more query words in a query of the index and returning the identified content items as a result set to the user," the patent filed in August 2, 2006 says.