The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo! is due to launch its Search Pad tool in the coming week. This is a new search feature the company has been developing which aims to help users store and organize their search results, including the ability to save results and take notes on web listings they want to revisit — much the same as Google's personalised search function.

Search Pad is designed to detect when users might be conducting research-related searches based on patterns in their search queries, such as sequential searches for holiday or weather related terms. It then asks the use if they want to start saving the results, and if so, saves the links a user clicks on a separate screen where they can also jot down relevant notes. Users who are then logged in can access their links and notes another time or share them with friends.

Although this is an interesting development for Yahoo! it may come too late, following Google's system and the recent interest in Microsoft's Bing search engine, although it does help to raise the awareness and interest in personalised search tools. However, with more rumours about a tie-up with Microsoft as well, Yahoo! could see this tool get overtaken by events.