Remember Burger King's "have it your way" campaign? It was a big deal, because unlike going to the dentist, I could finally choose what was put in my mouth. And the King wasn't the only one capitalizing on this marketing trend. Today, we grimace at any restaurant saying "sorry, you gotta get the burger with onions, olives and tomato". This consumer doesn't want tomato. Yes, I ordered the "breath abuse burger", but I'd like to tweak it a bit. Just slightly, in order to get a more impressive dinner. And breath.

We can do the same thing with searching for information on the Web. It's called "personalized search". No longer must we take the standard results from Googles and Yahoos. Use these tools to personalize and improve your search results.

http://furl.net

Furl allows you to save, search and share your favorite Internet pages. Give other Furl users access to this information for a collection of shared community bookmarks. Or keep things simple: Visit http://furl.net/search.jsp to search for topics already rated by other Furl users. By remembering how users rate their search results, the Furl community constantly tweaks and improves its search, and everyone benefits.

http://digg.com

Digg is a technology news website. Stories are submitted by members. Other members vote on those stories. The stories with the most votes, or "diggs", make it to the top of the listings. Search for topics you're interested in, or just browse through the front page: A story with lots of diggs is more popular and usually contains better quality news.

http://rollyo.com

Are you a fan of "Will and Grace" actress Debra Messing? Or string theory physicist Brian Greene? Both have Rollyo "searchrolls" for everyone to see and use.

A searchroll is a list of websites about a topic. Brian Greene's searchroll contains websites about string theory. If you know you'll be searching for string theory information, search the appropriate searchroll. Rollyo will only give you results from the websites in that searchroll. These detailed website lists give you very targeted searches with little or no "search spam".

Both Yahoo and Google have versions of what they call a "personalized search". Yahoo's version lets you bookmark and search lists of favorite sites, as well as allowing you to block sites from appearing in future searches. Google's personalized search watches how users search and click, and tweaks future search queries based on that information.

Like Yoda's grammar, searching the Internet is far from perfect. Lots of "search engine spam" appears during simple search requests. Personalized searches remove clutter and help us find what we need faster and easier. Whether tweaking search results or ordering a hamburger, getting rid of spam can only be a good thing.