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

A Younger Jeeves

[TheJavaGuy]

It looks like Mr. Jeeves got a lot younger.
Before:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030324210627/http://a sk.com/

After:
http://ask.com/

Why is this so difficult?

[Control Group]

They don't Get It(tm).

That's all there is to it. Based on this blurb, I went to look at Ask Jeeves, and see what they had to offer. Ran a search, clicked on a result - and they lost me when they kept control of a portion of my browser window so I could run another search.

I don't understand why so many companies don't understand such a simple concept: get off my back. Isn't Google's example clear enough for them? I like Google because it's fast and accurate, by and large. Because it's a simple page that loads quickly even if I'm somewhere on a dialup. It doesn't pop windows over or under my browser window. In short, Google acts like they want to help me, rather than like they want me to help them.

That's all there is to it. I can't think of a feature a search engine could add that would overcome Google's interface advantage. To get my clicks, another search engine would have to have an even more simple interface, and I see that being hard to accomplish.

Wait, I lied. If a search engine was able to somehow figure out what I mean conceptually rather than contextually, I would use it all the time...but since that would require an almost human level of language comprehension, I don't think I'll need to worry about switching any time soon. As it stands, AJ's "natural language" abilities were just "we won't tell you we ignored 'of' and 'the' in your search request."

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

[3terrabyte]

Different flavor, as embarressing logo.

Also, they didn't mention one very important thing. Google's Cache. Extremely important in many of my searches where ANY reference to something is needed, even an old link...text only.

CACHE!!

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

[afidel]

One little trick I use which is often helpfull for eliminating the online retailers that have google bombed is to use -shipping at the end of my search. This will generally eliminate sites wishing to sell me the product and leave legit sites with info about the product alone.