Ask.com, playing on their name, want to give you answers not just results. With that Ask.com rolls out it’s 11th major update and claims to be 30% faster than version 10.
So what’s new in version 11? Well back in the days of Ask Jeeves the search results were hand crafted, now all of the results come from the engine.
But what makes this one better? The past couple years in search engine land have seen the inclusion of blended search results. Blended search refers to search results that return a multitude of mixed, or blended, results. For instance a search for Sarah Palin on Google includes News and Images. Google shows 18,200,000 references of Sarah Palin in its index. Ask gives us slightly different results for Sarah Palin. After the ads you get a general block of Sarah Palin info that links out to various sources including her ‘Official Site’(really McCain’s), Encyclopedia and others.
Ask.com also has a Q&A section. Do a search for ‘What causes headaches?’ Click on the Q&A tab to see a list of questions and answer on that topic. I know this one in particular is something I’ve always wanted to know but was too tired to find out.
One thing to remember about Ask.com is that it needs to be treated like a resource for answers not just a results source so ask it questions
Ask also a skin feature. Click on the Peel me tab on the top left to choose from an array of designs. I watched the movie Gimme Shelter over the weekend so I chose the Altamont skin(See second screenshot below) Don’t like their designs? Well you can upload your very own. I chose a photo of the crowd I took at the recent Austin City Limits Festival(see third screenshot).
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com