December 29, 2009
Ask Answers Questions
Ask.com has re-established itself as a question and answer center. It did not disappear from the search scene as we feared it would in 2008 and may even be stronger. Market share is steady at around 2.5%.
The philosophy of Ask is to find the answers. Its algorithms are tuned to identifying the answer in published sources and matching it to the question. In addition, Ask has built a database of 400 million Q&A pairs.
In looking at it again, I'm impressed with its cleaner look and its search aids.
The front page is now free of Nascar advertisements. Users can put a new skin on it selecting from a gallery or uploading their own. Normally I don't care, but I was delighted to see that I could put Jeeves back on this page.
Search results page has some subtle changes.
+ Ask will link search terms to results from Dictionary.com - this at a time when Google and Yahoo have dropped definitions (although Google will look up single terms).
+ Top ranked results are usually smart answers or major sites. This is especially true for general searches.
+ Related searches are strong
+ Good questions from the Q&A may show up in a grouping.
+ Search history shows for the browser session.
+ Ask.com stopped putting opened results inside a frame.
On the negative,
+ There are still a lot of sponsored results - as many as 10 on a page.
+ The personal Ask.com doesn't work - can't sign in, can't sign up.
+ The shortcut map montreal to get a map of montreal and direction no longer works. The shortcut only works for US cities - eg map seattle.
Ask is looking to the social web to expand its question-answering capabilities. Ask.com president, Scott Garell outlined this scenario -
"We think over time, if you can connect to people’s networks, tap into their Facebook Connect and other sorts of things, that we can route questions, using our history of billions of questions that have been asked over time, we can use that to understand what is being asked, and to route it to the right person in your network to answer those questions."
Source: Ask.com president discusses the future of the search site, San Jose Mercury News via NJ Business News (Dec 22)
The Next Frontier in Search: Questions & Answers in the Ask.com blog (Nov 13) describes the signals that Ask looks for in identifying answers, and its intentions to turn to its "question-loving users to build a community of answerers available through Ask".
Posted by Gwen at December 29, 2009 03:49 AM