April 17, 2007

The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus

No I have not been born again. Apparently the Ask crew knows something the rest of us don't.

They are running that statement on billboards across the country. Another is "The Algorithm Killed Jeeves" - and I thought he was safely encased in carbonite - I was at the event where it happened. Guess the old butler's heart could not hold up to the process.

This is either going to be the best viral marketing effort for a search engine since GMail or Barry Diller is going to have a lot of problems.

The ads have only been running for a few weeks. I noticed "The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus" billboard as I was driving into Manhattan from Brooklyn today. The "killed Jeeves" one I was told is at 23rd and 10th in the city.

I also found a blogger that caught it on the west coast.

The campaign comes from Crispin Porter + Bogusky - of the truth commercials (the effective and shocking youth antismoking ads) - and seem to be pushing the envelope.

The funny part of this is when you look at the recent advertising Ask has done. Remember those monkeys on the TV commercials - where Ask was laying claim to making you more human?

Was this new campaign a response to the backlash about their support of evolution? And are we now to think that Ask is a Christian search engine?

The problem with pushing the envelope is the fringes always take things the wrong way. I expect tthis one to blow up very soon.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:02 PM | Permalink

December 19, 2006

Ask.com Using Ask X As Testing Ground

As the about page explains, this is Ask's "double-secret sandbox for testing Ask experiences of the future".

The layout is new with a tri-panel interface, similar somewhat to AskCity, another recently launched Ask addition.

Ask details the development below though when doing searches there were only 2 panels for a search of AussieWebmaster, one for Danny Sullivan brought all three.

# Left: A search control panel that stays with you, complete with Zoom Related Search and Search Suggestions that update as you type.

# Middle: Results front and center to provide clutter-free information without having to scroll down the page, and Binoculars to preview results.

# Right: A preview of other types of search results, including video, news, images, blogs, shopping, encyclopedia and more.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:46 PM | Permalink

September 27, 2006

What's Cooking in Search Engine Labs

Many of the major search engines showcase the projects they are working on in their respective research labs. Want a peek behind the scenes? Read on in today's SearchDay article, Behind the Scenes in the Search Engine Labs.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:25 AM | Permalink

July 20, 2006

Ask.com Adds RSS Smart Answers

The Ask.com blog announced a new feature to its Smart Answers line up today. For example, if you do a search on se roundtable an abbreviation of my blogs name, you will get RSS feed results at the top from my blog. The Ask blog says that the initial list of sites included "was selected based on the most popular feeds chosen by our users in Bloglines."

Currently, I am not sure why it does not work for the query Search Engine Roundtable when it works for the abbreviated version. Note that it does work well for Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Watch Blog but it does not pull the SEW blog RSS feed, it pulls the SearchDay feed.

Here is a screen capture of the first query:

More details at the Ask Blog.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:56 PM | Permalink

February 6, 2006

Ask Jeeves Opens European R&D Center; Several Interesting Live Demos and Papers by AJ R&D Center Leader Also Available

We've been posting about several new R&D centers from Yahoo and Google in the past few week's and today we've learned that Ask Jeeves has opened an R&D center in Pisa, Italy.

From the announcement, The research center will serve as Ask Jeeves' European hub for search technology research and development, working directly with the company's U.S.-based research centers in Campbell, Calif. and Piscataway, N.J...The company recently launched two European Web search sites, Ask Espana and Ask Deutschland, with additional European launches planned later this year...Lead by Antonio Gulli, an expert in search engine technology and the creator of Italy's first search engine, Arianna, the Ask Jeeves European research center will support all of Ask Jeeves search sites, including the flagship Ask.com.

In April 2005, we blogged a quick entry about a paper Mr. Gulli was presenting at WWW 2005 Conference titled: A Personalized Search Engine based on Web-snippet Hierarchical Clustering (PDF).

Gulli's home page is not only home to a treasure chest of interesting reading, slide presentations, tutorials, etc. but also to several live web demos including:

+ SnakeT (Alpha) "Hierarchical Clustering Engine for Book, News, Blogs and Web-Snippets." This is the search tool described in the paper linked above.

+ ComeToMyHead: a News Search Engine with Images, Classification and Personalization

+ Comparison Engine: Find Your Own Rank on Many Engines

Postscript: Here are a few other papers that Gulli co-athored for WWW 2005.

+ Ranking Stream of News (PDF)

+ The Anatomy of a News Search Engine (PDF)

+ Building an Open Source Meta Search Engine (PDF)

+ The Indexable Web is More than 11.5 billion pages (PDF)

Posted by Gary Price at 2:09 PM | Permalink

January 10, 2006

IAC/InterActive Debuts Comparison Shopping Search Service Named Pronto

Mr. Comparison Shopping himself, Brian Smith, posts that IAC/InterActive (the company that owns Ask Jeeves, Citysearch, Ticketmaster, etc.) has just released a comparison shopping service Pronto. Look for a review Brian's site shortly.

We will also plan to give it a go. Btw, I used the word service instead of site because Pronto requires the user to download a 2MB app. At the moment, it's IE only available for Windows 2000 or higher. You can learn more about Pronto here and the service itself via these FAQ's.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:39 PM | Permalink

November 21, 2005

MSN Powers UK's Times Online; Ask UK Scales Back Ads

Two brief items from the UK search scene today.

+ Revolution Magazine reports that MSN Search (MSN.co.uk) will power web search on the Times of London web site.

The six-figure deal will mean the Times Online Search the Web toolbar will be MSN branded, and will drive Times Online users to the MSN Search homepage. The placement will be fully integrated into the Times Online site and will run until June 2006.

+ The Netipmerative article: Ask scales back UK paid search ads, reports that Ask UK has done what we saw Jeeves.com do a few months ago and cut back on the number of ads on web results pages.

According to the company, Ask.co.uk will remove Branded Response and Answerlink ad products from the site as of December 31st.

The article also notes that Ask.co.uk has postponed its plans to offer their Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings in the UK.

Finally, Ask.co.uk is planning a "phased reduction" of their UK sales force between now and the end of the year.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:15 PM | Permalink

August 11, 2005

Far Out! Virtual Neptune From Ask Jeeves Goes Live (-;

Technical issues at the Ask Jeeves SES party on Monday made the debut of their new Virtual Neptune (VN) service an impossibility. However, this new service, I mean satire, is now ready for use. (-: The VN site mentions that local search listings from Neptune will soon be available. Cool! I wonder how many hotels, spaceship dealerships, casinos, or coffee houses are located on this distant planet. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 7:32 PM | Permalink

February 15, 2005

Will Mr. Jeeves Get Foxy?

Well it looks that rumors about a Google web browser has a new companion. Discussions about an Ask Jeeves browser based on Firefox have started after Tuoc Luong, executive vice president of technology at Jeeves posted about a recent meeting between representatives from Mozilla and Ask Jeeves on the AJ Blog. Luong also talked about "contributing" Ask Jeeves Desktop Search technology to the Mozilla Foundation. The Silicon.com article: Ask Jeeves considers Firefox partnership, has more.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:54 AM | Permalink

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