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October 19, 2006

More On Instant Answers, from Microsoft

Part two of our four-part series on "instant answers" provided by Ask's Smart Answers, Yahoo's Shortcuts, Google's OneBox results and Microsoft's Instant Answers is featured in today's SearchDay article, A Closer Look At Microsoft's Instant Answers. SEW correspondent Brian A. Smith offers an in-depth look at, appropriately enough, the Microsoft's Instant Answers featured on its newly launched live.com search engine.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:24 AM | Permalink

January 17, 2006

More Instant Answers Now Available on MSN Search

MSN Search's WebLog points out that MSN Search is now home to more Instant Answers (aka "direct answers") as web search engines continue to become "answer engines" for certain types of queries. According to the blog post, MSN has added more than one million facts to their database.

What's new?

+ Baseball Stats: Numerous statistics for historical baseball players and teams along with season data for current players. Stats from Baseball-Reference.com.

+ Football stats: Many lifetime and season facts for popular players and coaches. Stats come from Pro-Football-Reference.com.

+ Weather Statistics: Weather statistics for US states and major cities. Data from NOAA.

+ Government officials: Government leaders and world cabinet officials. Some data via Encarta other data via the CIA's Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments database. This database is updated weekly.

+ Current dates of major holidays and info about how holidays are celebrated. Data from the Office of Personnel Management (U.S.) and Encarta.

More examples in the blog post. Instant Answer results are found near the top of the page directly below the paid lists/sponsored sites.

In 2005 we saw Yahoo, AOL, Google, and MSN Search get more involved in the direct answer space (Y and G have offered some search shortcuts for several years) while Ask Jeeves (they've been offering Smart Answers since 2003) continued to develop and more of them.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:21 PM | Permalink

June 22, 2005

MSN Adds Direct Answers With Sports Info

MSN Search is now providing "direct answers" at the top of web results pages with scores, brief bios, stats for baseball and basketball teams and players.

No words as to when direct answers for other sports will become available.

AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo also offer snapshots/shortcuts/smart answers with current sports stats, scores, and info.

Here are a few examples from MSN:

New York Yankees

Shaq Height

Baseball

Vicente Padilla

More about direct answers from MSN here and from other engines here. We've also posted about Google's Q&A service.

Postscript: MSN provides more details about the new sports answers here: More on Sports Instant Answers and direct answers it provides in general here: Getting Answers.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:47 PM | Permalink

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