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Ask.com's Rising Star 128

Posted by Zonk from the going-up dept.
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."
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Ask.com's Rising Star More

Ask.com's Rising Star

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  • Clusty? (Score:2, Informative)

    by mdecarle ( 756338 )
    Clusters and Wikipedia ... Surely you mean clusty.com [slashdot.org] right?
    • Oops ... fixed link: http://clusty.com [clusty.com].

    • Lack of ads counts most? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MarkByers ( 770551 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @09:16AM (#15461246) Homepage Journal
      I don't think anyone is really bothered by ads any more. Those that want to see ads (or don't care either way) can see them, and those that don't want to see them don't have to (AdBlock). What's the problem? This is not a big issue in my opinion.

      • Re:Lack of ads counts most? (Score:5, Informative)

        by BluhDeBluh ( 805090 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @09:39AM (#15461324)
        Text ads are difficult to Adblock - you can Greasemonkey them, but it's hassle. On top of that, the ones on ask.com seem to be very annoying - a long list that takes half the page, so they are very difficult to ignore. I prefer Google's less prominent ones.
        • True, text ads can be annoying to block. If only there was something like the 'AdBlock Filterset.G' for Greasemonkey (i.e. a program that can automatically install and update ad-blocking scripts for GreaseMonkey) it would solve the problem for good.

          Posting this hoping some knowledgable slashdotter will reply with a link...
        • 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.
          • Although come to think of it, CustomizeGoogle is likely based on Greasemonkey. Oh well, still a good extension worthy of mentioning.

          • 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

            • 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.

              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.

              • 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

        • They're really easy to block if you use the right tool. Things like Adblock work for the old-school type of image ads, but that style is slowly being phased out.

          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
      • Lack of annoying ads. Adblocker or not, they've managed to make users cringe at the thought of ads. I've been on sites that were creative enough to bypass several types of adblockers just for the purpose of badgering the user.

        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.

      • You have a point. The only ads I really have a problem with are ones that come across your screen and block what you're reading and you have to search for the x button. Or the ads that constantly make noise or video so you wait eternity until it loads just cuz of an ad.
    • The ad running with the Ask.com founder made me roll my eyes, hearing that they were the only ones using clustered results. I use Clusty.com [clusty.com] if I want clustered results (and have since it was Vivisimo), and see no reason to switch. They should stick to natural language querying as their niche - other search engines have clusters covered.
  • How can they tell if what they are lifting are facts?

    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)

      by greenhollow ( 63021 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @09:38AM (#15461319)
      This is the same as trusting the newspapers, tv sound bytes and what celebrities say. You cannot make serious decisions about anything unless you do in depth research and take all sides into consideration.

      I call this "thinking". I do no think it is exclusive to any generation.

      • You cannot make serious decisions about anything unless you do in depth research and take all sides into consideration.

        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

        • 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
          • The average wikipedian is not only immeasurably better educated than our best journalists[...]

            That's where you made me laugh. That sentence is completely wrong.

          • 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.

            Falcon


          • 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...", "..

      • This is the same as trusting the newspapers, tv sound bytes and what celebrities say

        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, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      the first "Internet Generation" of kids who went through school believing everything they read on the Web

      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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why is Wikipedia any less trustworthy than any other encyclopedia? The articles can be independently edited and verified by multiple people if necessary to ensure accuracy. Regular encyclopedias on the other hand rely on the accuracy of a single company's team of editors and we've seen time and time again that they make mistakes constantly. My professors had no problem at all with the research I did for my dissertation that I backed up with facts from Wikipedia*.

      *Well, they didn't KNOW the facts were

      • Why is Wikipedia any less trustworthy than any other encyclopedia?

        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
      • Wikipedia has no reputation to protect. Other than the feeling of personal accomplishment, there's little reason for a contributor to be as factually accurate as possible, or to present a complete picture, or not to mislead, or to make the explanation even marginally readable. On the other hand, a source like the Economist or National Geographic or even the Times has at least some stake in the quality of its material. Frankly, I'd be inclined to trust the New York Post over any given random Wikipedia articl
        • there's little reason for a contributor to be as factually accurate as possible

          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

      • i think that a "web article" has different levels of trustability
        "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] :-))
      • *Well, they didn't KNOW the facts were from Wikipedia, but they didn't question them.
        You mean, you didn't cite your sources?
    • Its certainly more "facts" than what a typical first page of normal websearch results on your query would yield.
      Thats good enough for me.
    • Yeah, and before that it was "what they learn at school those days". "We" have been able to deal with that for centuries. And Wikipedia? If you think something is wrong, get off your ass and fix it instead of lamenting here.

  • Jeeves? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jacoplane ( 78110 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @09:38AM (#15461321) Homepage Journal
    Hmm, if they bring back Jeeves [wikipedia.org], I might contemplate using them ;) Seriously though, I doubt Ask.com will manage to grab much more marketshare. Wikipedia facts are nice and all, but Wikipedia results tend to come up high on Google results anyway. I think that there are simply not enough people who are willing to switch: look at the incredibly large marketshare IE6 continues to have to this day. I doubt they'll be able to withstand Google, Yahoo & MSN in the long run. I have to admit that Bloglines is nice, I use it all the time, and since it exports OPML I can always switch and take my feeds with me.
    • That's alot of personal opinion and speculation regarding the reaction of people at large when it comes to new approaches of organizing, displaying and communicating information on the web. Remember the personal web page of the 1990's? Everybody had a personal website with a link begging you to please sign thier personal message board.

      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

      • Ok, maybe I will. I've just added it to my Firefox search bar and I'll use it for a few days. I'm sceptical though. I find Google to be good enough most of the time, and I'm used to the advanced syntax for it. But I'll give it a shot.
      • Agreed... and especially in the world of web pages and search engines.

        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
        • To me, ask.com's best product is myway.com [myway.com], a 100% ad-free portal, which you can customize with the traditional (AP news feed, scores, weather, movies, tvlisitings, etc.
    • I think the big thing holding Ask back is the breadth of the search results, which Google is still king of.

      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

    • I don't know about "stealing marketshare," but they do perform better - often significantly better - on certain kinds of searches [nirajsanghvi.com]. I think it's a good supplement to Google, not a replacement.
  • The only reference in TFA about ask.com maps is "Its map and image search products, too, offer distinct advantages over the competition. Not much. However, see the maps tools [ask.com] and read a review of it [directionsmag.com]. If these maps-topics is of your interest, see also http://slashgeo.org/ [slashgeo.org] :-)
    • I've never really used Ask, the whole concept of ask an english question never appealed, because I couldn't believe that they could really get anything useful from the question syntax that would provide better results than keywords. I did just try their maps though and was quite impressed, many because you can do multi-location routes, which is great. My biggest problem with Google maps is in the Bay area when they always want to take me down US 101, which is often a parking lot, and I know the better rou

  • Priorities (Score:3, Funny)

    by GeorgeH ( 5469 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @09:51AM (#15461359) Homepage Journal
    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.
    If that's what matters most to you in a search engine, wouldn't Goatse.cx (R.I.P.) have been better than Ask, Google and Yahoo combined? I don't think it had any ads...

  • Full-blown... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @09:53AM (#15461364)
    a site originally designed to respond to queries in human language that grew into a full-blown search engine after the Teoma acquisition

    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.
  • Some business magazine said Burger King Burgers are really yummy and only losers eat at McDonalds. Furthermore, all of the really cool kids hang out at Burger King now.

  • What about punctuation? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by corsec67 ( 627446 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @09:57AM (#15461388) Homepage Journal
    The next thing I want in a search engine is for punctuation to be a part of the search.
    For example, how do you search for the difference between the following 2 LaTeX commands:
    \circle
    \circle*
    (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)
    • Come on, what do you want? A Computer or a Clairvoyant? Circle is a very generic word with so many meanings. Even LaTeX, though you are taught to pronounce TeX as tech by Donald Knuth and Leslie Lamport allows both lateks and latech, is more commonly known as a rubber compound used to make gloves and paint [FN1]. Thus shorn of context circle, even with punctuations does not give enough hints to help the search engine figure what you want. Heck, most human beings wont recognize what you are talking about if
      • (Using / as a search string delimiter)

        Yes, circle is a generic term, but "\circle*" isn't. When you search for printf, do you have to search for /C Dennis Ritchie printf/?
        Why can't I just search for /\circle \cicle*/ to get documents that contain both "\circle" and "\circle*", instead of having to name the language and the creator of that language.

        Yes, searching for /latex circle/ is hard to disambiguate, but /latex \circle*/ isn't hard at all, unless you throw away the punctuation, which is meaningful in t
      • While 'circle' is a generic term, the exact strings '\circle' and \circle*' are fairly specific to LaTeX. If Google (or any search engine) supported searching for the exact string, rather than picking the part of the string that looks like a word, a search for computer language syntax would be easy. That said, in the vast majority of cases having punctuation not count is a boon (eg, entering "foo-bar" will also pick up "foo bar"), because the vast majority of searches are not for computer syntax. All's he's
      • Heck, most human beings wont recognize what you are talking about if you just said "\circle \circle*"

        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
    • In theory they should interpret punctuations as characters to search on if they're placed within quotes. (Of course google isn't case sensitive, even within quotes). But then how do you search for quotes? The next step would be a system of escaping "special" characters.
    • "just about worthless" ??

      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 ... Note that when you put the asterisk '*' in front of % the text, that the section, ...
      www.astro.rug.nl/~kuijken/latex.html - 36k - Cached - Similar pages

        - One needn't even follow the link. Google is your friend.
    • As a Perl developer, I feel your pain. Searching for what "$[" means, for example, is hard: depending on where you learned English it could be "dollar-sign open-square-bracket," "dollar-sign open-bracket," or "guy wearing really weird glasses frowning robotically." I really want to be able to search for $[ by itself but Google won't let me [google.com]. (Nor will Yahoo!, Ask, or MSN.)
      • While I agree that search engines are a pain with this kind of thing, Perl has several very nice manpages. Specifically, the "perlvar" one contains the answer to your question, and the "perl" manpage lists all the ones there are. From the manpage:

        The index of the first element in an array, and of the first character in a substring. Default is 0, but you could theoretically set it to 1 to make Perl behave more like awk (or Fortran) when subscripting and when evaluating the index() and substr() functions. (M

        • I know, but sometimes I want to find the answer to a more specific usage-related question. $[ is mentioned all over the perldocs but most search engines simply filter it out as a search term. There are sites like Perldoc and Perlmonks that are more accommodating, though.

          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.
    • I'm not a programmer, but I am a person with a hyphen in my name and it would be nice if google recognized that there is a difference between "Bryan-Mitchell" and "Bryan Mitchell." Maybe I spend too much time vanity searching though...
  • you can get a ask.com firefox toolbar! At least they're innovative..
  • Hmmmmm, ASK.com is a dead search engine. I don't know about you but my fingers automaticly type "google" or "yahoo" when i need to find something. What can Ask do about it? I am sure...They will be sold in couple years to google or yahoo or msn...

  • "how many fingers does a human being have?" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:41AM (#15461566)
    Ask.com's first result is a webpage on How many fingers can you fit into your ass? [ask.com]. Now that's useful... ;)
  • If Google offers widgets in the search results, won't that blow away Ask.com's being stuck with Wikipedia? I just hope they credit me, since I know they're all reading this and thinking about it now.

  • Deceptive article... (Score:5, Informative)

    by cswiger2005 ( 905744 ) <cswiger@mac.com> on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:53AM (#15461618) Homepage
    quick facts from Wikipedia on the search page, and, (what counts most) fewer ads than any of the rivals

    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:

    Registrant:
    Digital Media Ventures LLC
    701 First Ave
    Sunnyvale, CA 94089
    US

    Domain name: PLASMA-HDTV-PRICES.COM

    Administrative Contact:
    Alexander Moskalyuk, - alex@moskalyuk.com
    701 First Ave
    Sunnyvale, CA 94089
    US
    4083492977 Fax: 4083492977

    Technical Contact:
    Alexander Moskalyuk, - alex@moskalyuk.com
    701 First Ave
    Sunnyvale, CA 94089
    US
    4083492977 Fax: 4083492977

    Record last updated on 19-May-2006.
    Record expires on 13-May-2007.
    Record created on 13-May-2006.

    Domain servers in listed order:
    NS1.DREAMHOST.COM 66.33.206.206
    NS2.DREAMHOST.COM 66.201.54.66

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not quite sure how accurate addresses in Domain registrants are ... but 701 First Ave, Sunnyvale Ca is Yahoo!s corporate headquarters.
      • These last three remarks are why Anonymous Coward is sometimes still worth reading, thank you all, and good job spotting the connection to Yahoo! corporate address.

        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. :-)
    • Is it possible to get subjects baned for a year for spamvertizing behavior?

  • Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @10:53AM (#15461619)
    The title of the article is "Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival", but I still want to know (and this is the third time I've asked):

    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.)

    • While they've been primarily supported by Google Ads, they're developing their own ad platform http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com/ [ask.com], which I think has not gathered enough critical mass among advertisers.

    • Re:Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by joeykiller ( 119489 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @04:41PM (#15463185) Journal
      Would you say MSN Search was _not_ a competitor of Yahoo Search, just because of the fact that they shared the ad system? (MSN Search used Overture (Yahoo) Ads until recently, when they in the US switched to their own AdCenter) I think the article indicates that Ask won't be using Google Ads indefintely, but that they'll contractually obliged to continue using Google for quite som time. From the article:
      its ads are provided by that much-larger competitor, in a deal that extends through the end of next year.

      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.
    • Its a cart and horse thing.

      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.

  • I've noticed that ask.com has found some sites that weren't found in google, but more often than not they have bring up a lot fewer sites than google. I've found myself using them when I don't find something from google.

  • 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

  • ...fewer ads than any of the rivals

    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.


  • There's a dated poster that hangs in a fairly well traveled hallway in the CoRE Building [rutgers.edu] at Rutgers [rutgers.edu] where Teoma was developed. It is an enlarged copy of an article theorizing that Teoma would provide significant competition to Google. It's somewhat funny to look at since it was written in the forgotten era of Google being popular, but not dominant. In fact, here's the article [rutgers.edu]. My favorite quote: "Google has reached its maturity." Maybe this is Teoma's second chance at attacking Google.
  • Even the link included in the slashdot article shows that the ask.com market share actually FELL over last year. So how is Ask.com "a rising star" then?

    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)

    by xkr ( 786629 )
    The 'old' ask.com was pure crap. The 'new' ask.com appears to be blatant attempt to copy google in order to get a piece of their billion dollar valuation pie.

    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

  • Fewer ads doesn't make a site better. In fact the reverse could be true, if the ads are sufficiently well targeted. The better the ads are targeted, the more likely they are to be part of the signal rather than part of the noise.

    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

  • or the lack of them.

    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)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @02:54PM (#15462709) Homepage Journal
    You used to be able to go to teoma.com [teoma.com] and get a very clean page. now it redirects you to this [ask.com] fancy looking page. I still like Ask Desktop Search [ask.com]. It's a bit nicer in some ways than Google Desktop.
  • Ask.com has many features not available with rivals -- topic clusters

    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.
  • I have been a Google user fo a loong time, and am still a Google user. That being said, I have to admit that Ask.com does provide some unique features like the zoom and expand your search, which are extremely useful in a lot of situations. Also, for many of my searches, the relevance of the results are better than Google. Smart answers are another thing that used to be unique to Ask. Other search engines have caught up to it, but Ask still does the best job answering my questions. It is so much easier to ty
  • ask.com, aka Ask Jeeves (remember those anoying commercials?), is a joke. They serve no purpose on the web anymore. With the improvement in search engine technology, they have become obsolete. I'd say they deserve to have such a tiny market share.
  • I don't know why Ask.com decided to only allow searches in English but... an attempt to search in Ask.com [ask.com] would provide exactly zero rezults, versus about 10 000 in Google Search [google.com] or 600 in A9 [a9.com] (basically MSN search).
    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
  • The first reply:

    "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.

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