Yahoo! to charge for searches

Yahoo! is to charge users for specialised searches, the latest in a line of subscription services aimed at recouping falling revenues resulting from the advertising slump.

Yahoo! plans to charge users between $1 and $4 to access files from a specialised database of 25 million research documents, many of them coming from niche academic journals.

The service, named 'Yahoo! Premium Document Service', is aimed at corporate and academic users, and collates information from 7,100 different publications.

The service is the latest in a long list of fee-based offerings introduced by Yahoo! over the past year. The portal has recently implemented charges for email, real-time stock quotes, personal ads, auctions and financial reports.

New money-making ventures also include paid-for placement listings on its free web searches, web conferencing and music videos on demand, as Yahoo! struggles to increase its revenues, which fell to $717m in 2001, down from $1.1bn the previous year.

Yahoo! isn't the only company to patch up revenue gaps with extra charges. Rival search engine Google has also introduced a fee-based search option, while media websites including The Times, the Sun and the Telegraph have introduced charges for archive searches and daily crosswords.

While it is unlikely Yahoo!'s service will contain new or unique information, visitors will pay for the convenience of a single access point, claimed Rebecca Ulph, an analyst with Forrester Research.

Within the next two to three years Yahoo! hopes to make one third of its revenue from subscription fees.

This is a realistic target according to Jupiter MXII analyst Olivier Beauvillain, but the absence of a customer database could place Yahoo! in a weaker position than some of its ISP rivals, he added.

"Yahoo! does not have a relationship with its users in the same way ISPs like AOL or Wanadoo have. They have details of customers who pay internet fees every month, so it will be easier for them to launch paid services. Yahoo! are starting from scratch here," he said.

The new service will be available to European subscribers via Yahoo!'s US website.