Ask.com's Rising Star 128
hdtv writes "Fortune magazine takes a look at Ask.com, a site originally designed to respond to queries in human language that grew into a full-blown search engine after the Teoma acquisition. According to Fortune, Ask.com has many features not available with rivals -- topic clusters, quick facts from Wikipedia on the search page, and, (what counts most) fewer ads than any of the rivals. Currently Ask.com maintains 5.9% share, a share that Fortune is sure will grow."
Clusty? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Clusty? (Score:1)
Lack of ads counts most? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lack of ads counts most? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lack of ads counts most? (Score:2)
Posting this hoping some knowledgable slashdotter will reply with a link...
Re:Lack of ads counts most? (Score:2)
Re:Lack of ads counts most? (Score:2)
Google ads (Score:2)
There's a Firefox extension called CustomizeGoogle which offers (among many other handy features) the ability to filter Google's text ads. I don't use it (Google's ads don't really bother me), but it's worth mentioning as an easy alternative to Greasemonkey.
Being text and seperated from search results on the right, I really don't mind Google's ads and because most of their revenue is from ads and I generally like the results I get from Google I occasionally will click on an ad, er open in a new tab then
Re:Google ads (Score:2)
But, Google is so gamed now that for many searches it's totally useless, while smaller sites like Ask or even AltaVista, which use different (and arguably worse) search algorithms, actually provide more usefull results.
using Google (Score:2)
When I still used Google regularly, I found that their ads, depending on my search, were as valuable as the search results. I mean, when doing a search for something like "custom pencils" or "cloisinne pins"; the ads that came up were at least as valuable sa the results.
I still use Google regularly, as usual when here I have Google open in one tab. It's not always the first SE I use depending on what I'm searching for. For instance when I do a search for something in or about anthropology or archaeolog
Re:Lack of ads counts most? (Score:2)
For google specifically there is the CustomizeGoogle Fx extension [customizegoogle.com] which makes it very simple to remove all text ads across all the google sites.
A more general-purpose tool is the (seemingly little-known) Remove it Permanently (RIP) [mozilla.org]. This lets you specify things to be removed with XPATH queries. If you don't know XPATH you can just right click on
Re:Lack of ads counts most? (Score:1)
On a more upsetting note, this abuse of ads makes legitimate advertising almost unworkable. I'm talking nonintrusive ads that allow a site to stay afloat despite costs. It's a pity to say the least.
Re:Lack of ads counts most? (Score:2)
Re:Clusty? (Score:2)
"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously.
I wondered what was going to happen when the first "Internet Generation" of kids who went through school believing everything they read on the Web finally got out into the workplace. Now, I suppose, I know.
And I am very, very afraid...
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
I call this "thinking". I do no think it is exclusive to any generation.
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Correct.
This is the same as trusting the newspapers, tv sound bytes and what celebrities say.
Incorrect. When a contributor to Wikipedia risks losing his principal source of income because what she has written in an article is wrong, then that contributor *begins* to approach equal standing with the professional journalists, writers, researchers, and editors of the "traditional" media and e
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Incorrect. When a contributor to Wikipedia risks losing his principal source of income because what she has written in an article is wrong, then that contributor *begins* to approach equal standing with the professional journalists, writers, researchers, and editors of the "traditional" media and encyclopedias.
Hehe, I guess you haven't read a newspaper in the last 300 years, huh?
The last time I picked up a NYT there were about two clear misstatements of facts or worse for every one essentially correct state
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:2)
That's where you made me laugh. That sentence is completely wrong.
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:2)
"The Economist" (Score:2)
Note: I say daily newspaper because I have some faith in the Economist and other weeklies. While the Economist is often laughably off, say when the story is on a continent where they have few reporters or on stories where their idealogical beliefs strongly contradict the facts, most articles seem to have had a serious minded fact checker or an editor give them a quick read.
The Economist also includes information that's hard to find elsewhere, and not just about economics.
FalconRe:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:2)
The average wikipedian is not only immeasurably better educated than our best journalists
better educated or more knowledgeable about a particular subject?
If it's the latter, I don't think there's any disagreement about that. How many talking heads would you need to keep on staff to cover every topic at a Master or PhD level?
Besides, a journalist can be a quick learner and frequently interviews experts. (or should be)
What bothers me about those in the media is listening to "...same exact...", "..
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:2)
Yes, it's true. It's always been true that we've trusted things we heard from well-known places. But in the past, we couldn't amplify that very much beyond ourselves. In the modern world, the issue isn't just "how much do you believe" but "how much effect can you have?". Because you can read something flakey on one site, launder the source of the info, appear to be a new source and accidentally confirm the information
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:1)
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:1, Funny)
They must have bee working for the CIA in the leadup to the illegal invasion of Iraq.
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:1, Interesting)
*Well, they didn't KNOW the facts were
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:2)
Because the article in Britannica on Maxwell's Theory was written by some dude named James Clerk Maxwell?
*Well, they didn't KNOW the facts were from Wikipedia, but they didn't question them.
We can't blame it all on the web. The quality of our professional academics isn't exactly at its apex either.
KFG
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:1)
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:1)
Absolutely correct. That statement is right on the money. Of course these Wikipedia article writers have no reason to be accurate.
But then, some other writer who may have an interest just might want to be and will correct the wrong ones. And that is where you fail. Look up such controversial things as pornography. You will notice that neither the anti-porn nor the pro-porn people have done a good job of steering those ar
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:1)
"publisher" > the JAMA or JRandomBlogger
"writer" (in the context of the C programming language) Brian Kernighan or some random TSCOG dude (who just finished reading a book on C say http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131103628/102-06 47617-2540101?v=glance&n=283155 [amazon.com]
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:2)
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:2)
Thats good enough for me.
Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? (Score:1)
Jeeves? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Jeeves? (Score:1)
Now we have blogs and and wiki's.
Suff evolves; new ways, trends and effencies are central to the expansion of the web. Once I said, "How could something ever replace hot
Re:Jeeves? (Score:2)
Re:Jeeves? (Score:2)
This is not installed software, they don't have a real hold on their users outside of delivering a quality product & having a recognizable name. Maybe they have their default home page of a handful of users, and there's the Firefox search box... but outside of that, switching from google.com to ask.com is trivial.
And ask.com has TV spots now, I saw one the other day, I gotta admit while I dismissed it as marketting cause I know a litt
Re:Jeeves? (Score:2)
Re:Jeeves? (Score:2)
Because I'm a narcissist, I tried a quick search for my play "Napoleon Vs. the Turk" on Ask.com, and got nothing related to it, even though it's mentioned on my blog, on digg, the Toronto Fringe webstie, and even has it its own homepage. Google returned all of those as top results.
I don't care about web page previews all that much, what I really care about is having as many search results as possible
Re:Jeeves? (Score:2)
Re:Jeeves? (Score:1)
Maps at Ask.com (Score:2)
Re:Maps at Ask.com (Score:2)
Priorities (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Priorities (Score:1)
Full-blown... (Score:3, Insightful)
They make it sound like an "upgrade", but it's the opposite. I bet I could use ask.com if it could really answer questions and they concentrated on that, instead of being a generic search engine.
Re:Full-blown... (Score:2, Informative)
Sometimes I use START http://start.csail.mit.edu/ [mit.edu] when I have a question like "what's the biggest country in Europe" or "What's the distance between Buenos Aires and Rosario"
Re:Full-blown... (Score:2)
In further news (Score:1)
What about punctuation? (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, how do you search for the difference between the following 2 LaTeX commands: (I know the answer now, but I had to look it up in my reference book, as google was just about worthless for my "latex star" query)
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:1)
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:2)
Yes, circle is a generic term, but "\circle*" isn't. When you search for printf, do you have to search for
Why can't I just search for
Yes, searching for
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:2)
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:1)
I might not know what he was talking about, but I could match it literally with other instances.
The real problem though, in this particular instance, is that he did not properly identify to himself what he wanted to search for on the web
Your search, by the way, is obtuse and relies on specific knowledge that only results in false hits.
Try something as simple as "latex+circle command". This one'll give you th
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:2)
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:2, Informative)
The search terms 'latex asterisk circle' gave this as 2nd result:
A Guide to LaTeX
\circle{d} draw circle of diameter d; * form draws solid disk \oval{x
www.astro.rug.nl/~kuijken/latex.html - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
- One needn't even follow the link. Google is your friend.
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:1)
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:2)
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:2)
Google has been known to make special accommodations for programming help. Google doesn't strip the punctuation from C++ or C#, for example. It'd be nice if all punctuation were searchable.
Re:What about punctuation? (Score:2)
And most importantly (Score:1)
Dead website (Score:1)
Re:Dead website (Score:1)
"how many fingers does a human being have?" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"how many fingers does a human being have?" (Score:1)
None, if you don't mind, and even if you do.
KFG
Not to give away good ideas, but... (Score:2)
Deceptive article... (Score:5, Informative)
This is obviously untrue-- there are zero ads on Wikipedia, which seems to be where ask.com has lifted much of the content only to wrap it in paid-for-placement ad banners. Do a search on ask.com and you'll get the top-3 sponsored paid ad links first, then the top-ten actual search results, and then another 5 sponsored paid ad links. By my count, about forty percent of the links ask.com shows you when you search are ad links.
Next, we could consider the author, who isn't identified by name or email address, but by a link to a freshly registered domain that's just over two weeks old:
View the "page info" and take a look at the links, this seems to be nothing more than an article by a shill who is getting paid to promote products and/or do market research on people who read Slashdot.
Re:Deceptive article... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Deceptive article... (Score:1)
I just bounced mail off to abuse@yahoo.com, showing the WHOIS info and asking whether the domain registration is legitimate or fraudulent-- who knows, perhaps it is legit (?!!!), but I CC:ed fraud@ftc.gov just to make sure that they pay attention.
Re:Deceptive article... (Score:2)
Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is Ask.com considered a Google "rival" if it primarily serves Google ads?
(How do I know? It serves an ad I've only placed through Google.)
Re:Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?! (Score:2)
Re:Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?! (Score:4, Interesting)
There's no economy in search ads before you have a large number of advertisers. This is because of the auction driven pricing and the fact that you buy keywords and search phrases. So before you're big enough on your own, you need the scale of a bigger network to get any revenues to speak of.
So shall they make it completely on their own, they need to grow. That's why they, in my eyes, are a Google Competitor, even though Google (for the time being) earns money on their success.
PS! One irony: Ask tries to monetize Image Searches with Google Ads, an area where Google is not trying to earn money yet. So the irony goes both ways, apparently.
Re:Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?! (Score:1)
Lets assume Ask has few sponsors, so rather then put "your add goes here", or some Lorem ipsum [wikipedia.org].
Ask has harmlessly copyed some of googles linkes.
Well, its posable.
Deep not wide (Score:2)
what Ask.com offers (Score:2)
According to Fortune, Ask.com has many features not available with rivals -- topic clusters, quick facts from Wikipedia on the search page, and, (what counts most) fewer ads than any of the rivals.
Topic clusters aren't available on other search engines? I guess they've never seen or heard of Mooter [mooter.com]. I've been using it for several months and I've never seen an ad though they do have a Sponsored Link in the top right corner. And while it doesn't have quick facts from Wikipedia on the first page, when I
Few Ads, but they're from Google (Score:1)
The author of this article praises ask.com for having fewer ads, but what he didn't realize is that the advertisements they do show are from Google Adwords. Much of the article compares Ask.com to Google and praises the former for being innovative and holding an edge over the others. Unfortunately, that point is somewhat hidden when you realize Google is profiting from their progress.
A Comeback for Teoma? (Score:2)
Ask.com market share not growing (Score:2)
Ask.com is using the questionable AOL business model. That is they advertise a lot on TV and traditional media in order to draw in users that are new to the internet. That's all good and all but those new to the internet users eventually become slightly more experienced and learn that everybody else actually uses google for search, so they switch too. Thus,
A cheer for bathwater (Score:2, Interesting)
But I tried out a couple of genuine searches that frustrated me in both google and wikipedia. Their results were significantly better. :) :) So I am going to eat a bit of crow and use them from time to time.
Competition is a good thing. We wouldn't want google turning into another M$, would we? So what if they are re-using google ads and wiki conten
ads are not bad things (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the poorly targeted ads that waste pixels and bandwidth. But ad targeting is getting better over time and "fewer ads" doesn't mean "fewer blinking banners about irrelevant crap" like it did a few years ago.
And if you're searching with intent to buy, ads are even more lik
not the features, it is the filters (Score:2)
While google, yahoo and msn applies artificial filters to comply with law/money interest. ASK.com is pretty much showing what you want it to show.
Also somehow besides that, this is the last engine that somewhat not completely poisoned with spam and blog spam sites.
I miss teoma.com (Score:3, Informative)
Clusters for everyone (Score:2)
Actually, you can "roll your own" topic clusters from results in Google, MSN, del.icio.us, etc. by using CQ web [q-phrase.com], a free contextual search agent for Windows and OS X.
Ask.com is different.. (Score:1)
What a joke (Score:2)
English only, so won't overpower other engines (Score:2)
Yes, English-speaking users in US and Europe are valuable in terms of potential "click-revenue" but cutting out everyone else is, IMHO, bad policy (and Ask.com won't let you look up in Kanji either: this [ask.com] has one "sponsored click-link" versus 100 000 000 results from google [google.com] with same sponsored lin
Q: "who is the most intelligent person on Earth?" (Score:2)
"The human thinks he's the most intelligent being on earth but that is not entirely true"
I guess it is the correct answer after all.
Re:YUCK! (Score:3, Funny)
http://games.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]
Re:Ask.com - They track every click you make (Score:2)
Re:Ask.com - They track every click you make (Score:2)
(They may only do this if you've used another Google service, even if you have Search History turned off, but those 2 GB of mail storage were just so tempting weren't they?)
Re:Ask.com - They track every click you make (Score:1)
Go make yourself a tinfoil hat.
Re: ZOMG they reinvented the yellow pages? (Score:2)
And where do you think all these portals get the data for their directories from? Not all of them blindly use DMOZ data and nothing else. Most, if not all, use a blend of DMOZ data, data collected from their own web spiders, and data collected from user interaction as I described in my original post. Once again, the data collected from user interaction tends to provide high quality relevancy because its derived from
Re:Ask.com - They track every click you make (Score:3, Informative)
More explanation available here [digitalpoint.com].
Re:Ask.com gaining conservative searchers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ask.com gaining conservative searchers (Score:2)
Most of the points I summari
Re:Ask.com gaining conservative searchers (Score:2)
I quickly scanned some of the alleged hate speech, I am not sure if it qualifies as hate speech, but I see how Google may be affraid that they would get too much complaints if it shows up on the front page of google news. Also I don't think dailykos or democratic underground contain "the same kind of hate speech".
I dont