Ask Jeeves Looks to Outshine Google

bizpile writes "The AP is reporting that Ask Jeeves is looking to distinguish itself from its competitors by adding new tools for visitors to save and organize links to Web pages they find through the company's online search engine. "Google is not better than us," said Jim Lanzone, an Ask Jeeves senior vice president. "We are both operating at a world-class level. We just have a different flavor." This free feature is scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday." With Amazon's new search engine recently arising, it definitely appears to be a critical time for search engines.

Comments

What a crock of poo.

[grub]

"Ask Jeeves is touting its service as more user-friendly because it doesn't require the installation of any toolbars or software programs."
FUD. Google and other search engines don't require toolbars or software installation.

"The next generation of search isn't going to be about who can build the biggest indexes (of Web pages)," said analyst Charlene Li of Forrester Research. "It's going to about finding better ways to personalize search results and modify the way the results are presented."
That's outright idiotic. I want the most relevant search results based on the largest index possible.

I just 'asked jeeves' to look up my real name in quotation marks: 481 hits. Google? 1420. A quick glance to the last hits on Google are indeed relevant. What has AskJeeves missed? Google isn't going to rest on their laurels, AskJeeves will be playing perpetual catch-up. Now when have you heard "Ask Jeeves" used in the common vocabulary? What about Google? It's a used as a verb now.

Re:What a crock of poo.

[drinkypoo]

Google and other search engines don't require toolbars or software installation.

If you want to rate links you need the google toolbar.

AskJeeves reads once and indexes at will

[garcia]

It was certainly distinguishing itself in my logs... I recently moved to a "gallery.lazylightning.org" setup from lazylightning.org/gallery/. Oblivious to the problems this would cause w/my robots.txt I had every spider and their brother killing my webserver with requests.

Anyway, so I create a new robots.txt file that includes all the individual directories from the gallery directories. AskJeeves apparently read the robots.txt the day before and thought it was then ok to index the site after that at its leisure. It spent the next two days indexing my site even though it was ignoring the new robots.txt put in place about 24 hours before.

AskJeeves will no longer be indexing my site as I just banned their know IP ranges. If you are going to compete as a search engine you best make the people you are spidering happy.

MSNBot was spending the time indexing my site as well but they didn't fail to ignore the new robots.txt that was put out there. Thanks! :)

Re:Perpetual also-rans have a place in this world.

[stecoop]

In marketing, you would learn that all arenas of buinsess have 4 players. The 4 companies will occupy 80% of that market. Thus what you are seeing is certain players aligning to fit the model.

Oh re-hehehehe-eally?

[Haydn Fenton]

What, you mean like ~detect~? Seems to have a wildcard function to me.. aswell as literally hundreds of advanced functions that almost no other search engines posses..

Re:Oh re-hehehehe-eally?

[Barondude]

Limited documentation is at http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html.

Re:Oh re-hehehehe-eally?

[RealAlaskan]

... you mean like ~detect~? Seems to have a wildcard function to me..

That's not wildcard, that's synonym searching. From the Google docs:

" ~" Searches

You may want to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. Indicate a search for both by placing the tilde sign ("~") immediately in front of the keyword.

For example, to search for food facts as well as nutrition and cooking information, use:

~food ~facts

Google does do wildcards, but only in quoted strings. They don't seem to have documented it on their website, but I've found it here, among other places.

Google search tip: wildcard word (*)

Google treats "*" as a wildcard meaning "any word". You can use it in phrases to: Ignore unimportant words

* "all but * anything but" (vs, and)
* "shanked * jengaship" (my, your, his jengaship)

Fill in phrases where you don't know a word

* "phyllis * tam" pomona (a middle name)
* "the * family is my boss" (hard-to-understand song lyrics from a song in Office Space)

See how people have filled in expressions and jokes

* "185 * walk into a bar"
* "friends don't let friends * *" (*'s at the end just keep the phrases from being cut off in snippets.)
* "* is to * as * is to *"

Crudely "search by proximity"

* "The shareware version * 10 levels"
* "The shareware version * * 10 levels"
* "The shareware version * * * 10 levels"

It's pretty powerful, but it's only in what google calls a ``phrase search''.

Yes and No

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Jeeves uses Googles paid advertisments, but their search engine is entirely their own. They bought the company Teoma, which had developed it's own competing search technology. That's what all the Jeeves properties use for search now.

Re:Perpetual also-rans have a place in this world.

[DrEldarion]

Of course, your "Ease of typing" argument gets completely reversed on you when you take into account the fact that you can use "ask.com" or even "aj.com" to get to Ask Jeeves.