Yahoo! has added the functionality of making custom RSS feeds based on search terms in Yahoo! News. With this new feature, Yahoo! can actually boast that it has something that Google does not, which is surprising due to the fact that Google has been behind in making an RSS application for its news search. MSN also has the functionality of generating custom feeds, and Ask Jeeves has RSS feeds available in pre-determined categories.

This just goes to show that search engines are catching on quick to the marketability of RSS feeds. Take Lockergnome for an example. Although it’s not a search engine, I would venture to say that much of the site’s traffic is due to the little orange boxes in every category title that beckon users to have Lockergnome’s articles published on their desktop. The ability to provide constant, up-to-date news to viewers is worth its weight in gold, and is going to become a must-have in the near future for any serious search engine.