by Stephen Shankland
May 8, 2008 10:48 AM PDT

Update 3:30 p.m. PDT: A correction: Although only travel modules could be sponsored at launch, now all can be. Also, there's no display ad opportunity at present, though the sponsorship can mean more prominence than text ads. Update 11:45 p.m.: I updated with new detail from Yahoo, further information from the site, and some analysis.

Yahoo has begun testing Glue Pages, a major new way to present search results that caters to its strength as an Internet portal. Glue Pages, which the company began offering in beta form to Yahoo search users in India, combine traditional search results with a wealth of other related information. Traditional search results appear in a strip on the left side of the page, while other modules appear that spotlight sponsored links, recipes, medical information, Wikipedia entries, stock charts, Flickr images, train schedules, restaurant lists, news, and even Google blog search results.

Yahoo's Indian team developed the feature and so far there are no plans to bring it to the United States or other areas, said spokeswoman Kathryn Kelly. "We encourage other regions to develop things that work for their regions," Kelly said. "If it does get traction, potentially something like it could launch in the United States." Yahoo pioneered Internet portals, all-purpose sites where people can find everything they need, but Google found a much stronger business model through an effective search engine that presents bare-bones results with text ads alongside.

Yahoo, though, hasn't given up, even though it continues to lose search share; In March the gap widened a bit more, with 59.8 percent of U.S. queries at Google and 21.3 percent at Yahoo, according to ComScore. The search is interesting for other reasons besides Yahoo's portal strengths.