Yahoo seems to be toning up its search engine. On Wednesday, Sunnyvale, California based Yahoo introduced a new tool for its search engine to help make internet research easier for its users. Well, Yahoo’s new search engine tool, christened as “Search Pad” will help its users in saving links, typing notes, removing or editing notes, copying and pasting content from sites, marking pages, and sharing the collected info with friends through e-mail.

Yahoo Search Pad will help the users in taking notes and in keeping track of websites while researching online. It will facilitate the users in determining the aim of their search. It will show the time spent on a particular site and it will also help in finding specific information or collecting bulks of info on a single topic.

The information and links to sites that a user visits get automatically collected and saved in the Search Pad’s note-taking application, which shows up on the upper-right hand corner of search results. It’s been touted as a useful tool for doing academic research and for vacation/shopping planning; the info gets saved in the users' Yahoo ID.

According to Yahoo, Search Pad is currently in beta; it will be presently available for limited Yahoo users, but it will available for all in "in the coming months".

Several other vendors are providing similar services, but Yahoo has integrated the service with its search engine that calls the users to "Give it a try." Commenting on Yahoo’s new tool, Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said “Yahoo needs to give Search Pad a ‘wow factor’ that will set it apart from similar tools and motivate people to give it a try. I want to see a really sexy application and features that really raise it above the crowd.”