Yahoo launches contextual search service

Instead of starting a search from a text box, a person would search while reading a specific page. For instance, a reader looking at a news story about the State of the Union address might highlight the phrase "Social Security" to get a listing of pages that deal with that topic.

The company, which has released the service in a test format, said it is making the coding available to Web designers to embed in their sites, so that the tool can search their pages. Yahoo is also offering versions of the tool for its news site and as a toolbar that readers can download and run on their browsers.