  The World Wide Web is a vast and continuously changing source of information
where searching is a frequent, and sometimes critical, user task. Searching is
not always the user's primary goal but an ancillary task that is performed to
find complementary information allowing to complete another task. In this
paper, we explore primary and/or ancillary search tasks and propose an approach
for simplifying the user interaction during search tasks. Rather than fo-cusing
on dedicated search engines, our approach allows the user to abstract search
engines already provided by Web applications into pervasive search services
that will be available for performing searches from any other Web site. We also
propose to allow users to manage the way in which searching results are
displayed and the interaction with them. In order to illustrate the feasibility
of this approach, we have built a support tool based on a plug-in architecture
that allows users to integrate new search services (created by themselves by
means of visual tools) and execute them in the context of both kinds of
searches. A case study illustrates the use of these tools. We also present the
results of two evaluations that demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and
the benefits in its use.
