What do you say to an old friend who's over extending themselves yet again? This morning 3rd tier search engine Ask.com proudly tooted its horn one more time - "It's Here! The New Ask.com!"
Ask.com is a decent search engine, it does a lot of things well enough to check out once and appreciate before moving on. (Maps, for example.) I use its Blogsearch all day long. I like Ask and many of the innovative things it does, but not enough to use many of its tools with any regularity. Today the search engine relaunched, saying it now leverages Semantic Technologies. Upon performing some searches though - I can't tell what's different. I just wish they'd stop.
In its blog post today, the company says:
Presenting direct answers to your searches, front and center, has always been at the heart of the Ask.com experience, and we push further down that path today with the introduction of three new answer technologies: DADS, DAFS, and AnswerFarm.
Didn't anyone ever teach Erik Collier, Ask VP of Product Management, that it's rude to drop acronyms in conversation without defining them? He never does in the announcement. It makes you look pretentious, unless you are a perpetual also-ran after years in your field and millions spent advertising - then it just makes you look silly. By DAFS I presume they mean Document Attribute Format Specification (or did they mean Direct Access File System?), I can't find a mention of DADS in 40 semantic web blogs we follow and presumably AnswerFarm is the new Q&A tab. So the new Ask.com brings acronyms for superior performance to the table.
The Q&A tab is cute. I tried a wide range of questions and it gave me nothing but ads. If I grunted a phrase at it, then the AnswerFarm offered some Questions on that topic that I might not have thought to ask. Entertaining, educational and a bit like flipping through an Encyclopedia with a celebrated but totally non-functioning table of contents.
Just a few months ago it was reported that Ask decided to focus on the Question and Answer paradigm because it's popular with existing users. Today's announcement appears consistent with that - though semantic parsing of the questions being asked is a lot less impressive than semantic analysis of the pages being indexed by the search engine. According to an eWeek profile this morning, Ask is showcasing its ability to understand the meaning of search queries, even if the words are jumbled. It sounds like "semantic web" more in the flavor of Powerset than Yahoo Search Monkey - and presumably Ask didn't spend Powerset-like cash to do the same level of research.
I like Ask's Blogsearch a lot. It offers a very clear value proposition. It places a premium on blog feeds that have been subscribed to in the company's popular feed reader Bloglines. That cuts down on spam and offers all kinds of intriguing possibilities for discovering who the top bloggers are who write about certain keywords. I'm not kidding when I say I use it all day, every day.
These incessant "relaunches" of Ask.com's primary site are getting really old, though. Relaunches and stupid ad campaigns just aren't cutting it. Ask should focus on doing something they can really compete in. The AnswerFarm tab could be a good one, if it worked better.
Comments
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I didn't see you link to the Ask.com Blog Search, directly, and Ask hides it when you are just on their front page or plain search results.
It's located here:
http://www.ask.com/?tool=bls
I'll start cross-referencing Google's blog search results with Ask's, and see how it fares in finding what I want.
-Wayne
Posted by: Wayne | October 6, 2008 11:54 AM
Probably you should ASK what DADS & DAFS are ... :)
Posted by: Ivan | October 6, 2008 12:29 PM
Good gravy. After I left off working there they wholly abandoned semantic search. Now it's back? Or is it just a joke (as in, saying semantic search is coming back to Jeeves is just semantics)? Will Jeeves be coming back to? Worse for wear, dissipated as Noel Coward at the end? I wonder if the unapologetic perversity of the place will make a comeback too? Sadly, I doubt it.
Posted by: Curt | October 6, 2008 2:44 PM
Not directly related to this post, but this has been going round in my mind regarding alt search engines.
I usually try each search engine a couple of times and then go back to Google. Not very innovative on my side.
Is there any "Alternative Search Engine Day Meme" or something similar going around?
For example:
Every monday try the alt search engine listed here:...
Would be nice to have a no brainer tourist guide and create the habit. I would certainly learn a lot.
Best,
A
( of course this fits in the altsearchengines.com domain )
Posted by: Aldo Bucchi
|
October 6, 2008 7:53 PM
Interesting - Ask's blog search did come up with some comments that Google's blog search did not. The web search was identical (as one would expect -- I believe they use the Google search engine).
I like Ask, because I think they are really trying to add value to the search process. I respect their innovation.
Posted by: Ted Murpy
|
October 7, 2008 9:10 AM
@Aldo
We have 3 lists you could use for your weekly experiments:
Our monthly Top 100 list - these are my favorites:
http://altsearchengines.com/2008/09/01/the-top-100-alternative-search-engines-september-2008
(arranged alphabetically)
The Search Race our reader's favorites TheSearchRace.com
(arranged by popularity)
And the domain http://AltsR.Us
(arranged by web statistics)
Enjoy!
Posted by: Charles Knight | October 7, 2008 9:15 AM
Have to agree that Ask is innovative and does provide some value, but outside of the blog search, it's Google.
It does seem like they change their search and company a lot.
Posted by: Jayson | October 7, 2008 12:50 PM
I've never been a huge fan of ask.com. It's just never been appealing to me.
Posted by: Free Xbox 360 | October 7, 2008 1:15 PM
I like Ask's privacy policy. If you turn on AskEraser it is pretty good. Since AskEraser launched I now use Ask for probably 2/3s of my searches. That last third sends me back to Google though. I just use the search box in Firefox and then change the search engine when Ask's results aren't cutting it.
Posted by: Somebody | October 7, 2008 1:41 PM
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Ask.com should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Posted by: Dylan Thomas | October 7, 2008 2:08 PM
Wow dude you hit the nail on the head.
www.privacy.es.tc
Posted by: Jim Jones | October 7, 2008 3:28 PM
I've always been into ask, to me they seem to be a cleaner interface and do a great job suggesting alternative searches. Never tried their blog search though, will check that one out tomorrow.
Instead of relaunching and redesigning their search engine, they should spend time doing things that are important .... Like making their latest purchase (dictionary.com, thesaurus.com, etc) less like a MFA site and more like a resource. You can't even get a definition above the fold since they took the sites over.
Posted by: Meta Searcher | October 7, 2008 8:06 PM
Ask really sucks. They seem to be getting worse, and Google better.
Posted by: free ps3 | October 8, 2008 10:29 PM
From: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Askcom-Taps-Semantics-for-Smarter-Search-64732.html (found using Ask)
DADS = Direct Answers from Database
DAFS = Direct Answers From Search
But we shouldn't have to work this hard to find it, the press release should have given the info...
Posted by: ACheyer | October 15, 2008 8:24 AM
I use their new ghetto search service at axe.com instead.
Posted by: design | October 15, 2008 10:34 PM