A Web portal is a site that is designed to serve as an Internet starting point, offering a set of commonly-used sites and services. A portal has a Web directory, a keyword search engine and links to common reference tools such as maps and telephone directories. Newer portals also tend to offer high-interest consumer services such as news, weather, personal finance, sports, travel, entertainment, recreation and email.
Portals let users create a customized portal page with preferred news, sports, weather, etc.
Examples of Web portals are Netscape Netcenter , Go Network , Yahoo , Lycos and Excite . Web portals evolved from search engine sites that added features in their quest to become comprehensive starting points for consumers. Portals are repeating the history of the proprietary online services such as America Online and Compuserve which have offered these features and services for more than a decade. The portals' only serious innovation is that the user can customize the site in a variety of ways. Internet Search Engines Search engines are the software used to search databases.