A number of major news outlets plan to announce today that they are adding a new way to search their Web sites, a move aimed at boosting traffic by encouraging readers to use them as a first stop for information gathering, just like Google or Yahoo.
Inform Technologies LLC, which is based in New York, said 16 online publications plan to include its new search function. Among them are WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive's Newsweek.com and Conde Nast's Portfolio.com. Now, those and other news outlets employ teams of Web editors to add links to the online versions of newspaper or magazine articles. Those links usually take readers directly to other related articles on that publisher's site.
The new technology automates that process and creates a new search results page that includes information and articles about related topics from a variety of sources, such as other newspapers or blogs. WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive, part of Washington Post Co., already uses Inform's technology on its washingtonpost.com Web site.
The goal is to get more people to visit these sites more frequently, which would in turn cause the sites to show up higher on the results page of search engines like Google.
Write to Emily Steel at emily.steel@wsj.com
