Ask Jeeves Zooms In on Search Results
Posted by Dennis O'Reilly | Thursday, May 26, 2005 6:31 AM PT
Web search service
Ask Jeeves is adding two new services that promise to answer your questions faster than ever. The first, called Zoom, bases the results served up by the company's Teoma search engine on the topic "communities" it has identified on the Web. So a search for "John Lennon" may return links to pages on which the words "John Lennon" do not appear, but that do include information about The Beatles, Paul McCartney, or even rock and roll.
The other new service, called Web Answers, harkens back to Ask Jeeves' roots. It delivers answers based on standard questions, such as "Who was the first person to the South Pole?" Of course, direct answers have been available from every other major search engine for some time (most notably MSN Search's use of information from the Encarta encyclopedia).
A quick look at demos of both new services left me wanting to see more. If you already use Ask Jeeves for Web searches, I think you'll appreciate the new services. However, only time (and many, many test searches) will tell whether Ask Jeeves' results are worth making the switch from Google or any other search engine.
What would it take you to switch from Google?
The reason I like Google so much is the simplicity. There are ads, but I don't feel like they are cluttering the space. Yahoo has so much stuff on the page that I get distracted from my search results. Most other sites are the same. Google is powerful, yet simple and elegant.
This is a very useful function in some situation. Suppose you know sth. about the French Revolution, but you don't remember the name of that famous general. You can type in "French Revolution" and then find the name "Napoleon."
Ha!
I type "reaktor" (a sound generation software instrument), I get the home site of the manufacturer (Native Instruments), I see a little binoculars icon, mouse over it and see a snapsot of the Native Instruments home site (cool), I click the binoculars icon and I end up at microsoft.com! What?
Jeeves.com does not get a second chance from me.
Google, unlike Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and others actualy gets you where you want. You type in a software name in Google you get the manufactor's site first. Not Amazon wanting you to buy the title. (Im talking about the non-add sections) Not so in Ask Jeeves.
What would it take for me to switch from Google? Years. Years of steady, reliable, non-ad-intrusive service. Nothing less.