Personalising your web searches couldn’t be easier or cheaper. Surf Canyon, a free downloadable browser extension, recently revealed its upgraded version 2.0, which includes my.SurfCanyon.com, where you set your own personal search likes and dislikes.

You can specify websites that you prefer and websites you don’t like. Sites from your disliked list will be removed from search results pages. Search results from your favoured domains are more likely to appear in the recommendations as you "drill down."

my.SurfCanyon.com lists categories where you checkmark your preferences. Each category has several check boxes, samples of which are listed here. Do you think Encarta is more reliable then Wikipedia? Check one, not the other. Want the fluff of Entertainment Weekly or the listings from TV Guide, or both. Want to enable Craigslist, but not Yahoo? You aren’t restricted to prelabled check boxes either. You can add your own list of likes and dislikes.

When search results appear, after you click on one item, Surf Canyon returns their recommendations based upon that click. Those new choices display below the original result. You preset how many recommendations you want to see. Clicking on one of the recommendations takes you to a new level of more specific recommendations. A bulls eye beside the original result or beside a recommendation lets you immediately see Surf Canyon’s recommendations based on that selection without having to go to that site itself. You should be able to improve relevancy by up to 40 per cent by filtering your results.

The latest version is compatible with McAfee Site Advisor and can be used with Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and Windows XP, 2000, 2003 or Vista. As an add-on for Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE6 and IE7), it applies to Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Craigslist.

Surf Canyon hit the road running. Version 1.01 had Relevancy Engine support for 13 languages, including Hungarian and Swedish. The user interface translated to Spanish and French. Version 1.10 added Craigslist and Firefox 3.0. and 1.16 added Google Search Wiki.

Surf Canyon’s patent-pending technology, named Discovery for Search, is embedded in a browser extension that can work with virtually any third-party search engine. It helps users find relevant information that's buried within the daunting number of search results.

Early algorithmic search engines such as Excite and Alta Vista worked completely from document content to estimate their relevancy to a query. Since then, commercial search engines have added several other inputs to determine document relevancy. Based on the user's actions, Surf Canyon infers intent in real time, dynamically updating the search engine results page.

Surf Canyon, founded in 2006 in Oakland, CA, was selected by Read Write Web as one of the Top Ten Alternative Search Engines for 2008. X