Ask.com Looks Different (Again)
Ask.com took yet another step towards revamping its interface and performance on Monday, about a year after its widely covered 3-D interface was introduced.
In hopes of making some forward progress in a market where Google holds the ring that rules them all, Ask.com has actually taken steps towards what it was in days of yore.
For starters, the search engine has toned down its 3-D interface, sliding back into a more familiar two-paned setup. The videos, images and other results that were offered in the 3-D setup are not done away with, however. They have just been shifted into the main results pane.
Chief Executive Officer Jim Safka, who turned Match.com into a successful investment for IAC Corp, claims that Ask.com is now 30 percent faster. This is not too hard to believe, given that the new, stripped-down interface requires less processing than the 3-D pages that preceded it.
Before Jeeves was done away with, Ask Jeeves was the go-to site for question and answer queries in the early days of the Internet. Since then, Ask.com has attempted to look and act like Google, only with a little more flair. In the process, the search engine failed to take advantage of the fact that many of its users still viewed and used it as a question-and-answer site.
It seems that the company has finally embraced its core reputation again.
Though it is still in beta, Ask.com now features a Q&A tab on its search results pages. The feature is also accessible when the user types in a question into the search box.
Ask.com accesses various sites that focus on handling question-and-answer queries, including Yahoo! Answers, eHow and Wiki Answers, along with articles that feature questions in their headlines, to find results and answers to these questions.
A user can also ask the search engine about television schedules. Ask.com will return TV listings for the show along with the channels and times it will be showing.
“On average, it takes consumers three clicks to find what they are searching for online,” said Safka. “Ask.com’s goal is to reduce this to one click of the search box.”
Overall, this is a bold step forward for Ask.com. It is a valiant effort not because of a game-changing interface in the same vein as 3-D, but because Ask.com has humbly embraced more of what it used to be, which is more in line with what its users think it to be, which is a good thing.
While taking away market share from Google is a tenuous venture for anyone, Ask.com included, if its current users become more faithful and engaged with it, this revamp can be deemed a success.
Sources:
http://www.ask.com/
http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Ask-Revamps-with-Semantic-Search/story.xhtml?story_id=0120013PCCL0
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20081006/wr_nm/us_ask_revamp
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10058007-2.html?tag=mncol
