How Web portals stack up

With a multitude of sites to choose from, and with the major portals continually making changes and improvements, keeping on top of the options can be tough.

On Monday, rival Internet guides Lycos and Excite both took the wraps off their newest "start page" options.

What follows is an overview of the features available on the main Web start pages, including some options you might not have known existed. All of the sites below function as Web directories, or search engines. But in addition to the search function, here's what you can do on:

Yahoo!
The mother of all directory sites takes the soup-to-nuts approach to Web portaldom. After filling out a questionnaire about the types of news and other information you'd like delivered on the personalized My Yahoo! (YHOO) site, plus certain personal data, such as e-mail address and age, the user is delivered to the page that pulls these options together.

The page is accessed through a saved user name and password. The company says it may use information about your clicking pattern on the site for advertising purposes, but promises not to divulge personally identifiable data to third parties.

The My Yahoo! front page offers news, stock quotes, sports scores and weather targeted to your personal interests and location. To drill down further, the My Yahoo! user can pick options of special interest on the finance, health, chat, entertainment, travel shopping and computer channels of the Yahoo! network.

Other choices include stock quotes, a Yahoo!-branded Internet access package, chat, e-mail, yellow/white pages, maps, classifieds, personals, shopping, news, sports, weather, comics, lottery results, ski reports, TV listings, message boards, seniors' guide, instant messaging, image surfer, games, local events, entertainment guides and more.

Excite
As the company announced Monday, Excite.com (XCIT) is taking over the start-page function that the My Excite page used to fill. By moving the personalization features to the main Excite.com page, the company hopes to drive even more traffic to its network of sites.

Signing up for the personalized Excite page is a similar process to signing up for the other portals, but Excite, a member of the TRUSTe Web site privacy initiative, offers a variety of opt-out privacy options.

On Excite, you can customize the appearance of your start page, and also go through an extensive list of preferences to target news headlines and other content to your every whim. The personal Excite page, accessed through a saved user name and password, also offers a feature called "Learn What I Like" that takes preferences established in earlier clicking patterns and uses them to target data to your needs in future visits to the site.

Also, an important date reminder feature will give you a red flag a week, a month or a day before your mom's birthday or your wedding anniversary. A notepad feature lets you jot down bits and pieces of data you'll need later.

Other offerings include e-mail, yellow/white pages, shareware finder, classifieds, reference, maps, chat, stock quotes, news, sports, weather, important date reminders, bookmarks, horoscopes, local TV listings, online greeting cards and more.

Lycos Personal Guide
Personal Guide, also debuted by Lycos (LCOS) Monday, organizes content and services into very specific categories that are accessed by a saved user name and password. Its four channels -- Front Page, Contacts, Entertainment and Sports -- function like an online personal information manager.

All general news, weather, local events stock quotes and suggested links reside on the Front Page channel. The Contacts channel is home to the user's address book, important date reminders, and chat and instant messaging functions. Through Lycos' Tripod unit, the user can create a personal home page. Lycos also promises not to divulge personal data to third parties.

Other options include news, weather, stock quotes, e-mail, classifieds, yellow/white pages, road maps, image search, local content guides, message boards, create your own home page, bookmarks, horoscope, site recommendations, lottery results, address book, and travel bookings.

America Online
While America Online Inc.'s Web portal doesn't offer a "My AOL" option per se, it does offer Web-based e-mail, instant messaging, and links to the user's AOL (AOL) online service e-mail account. Plans are in the works for a targeted news headline tool.

Click here for looks at AltaVista, Snap!, Infoseek and Netscape's Netcenter.