One of those big longtime Google rivals is Ask.com, which announced last week that it’s going to cease work on its own search engine, use one provided by an unnamed third party, and focus on its Q&A service. Yesterday, I met up with Ask CEO Doug Leeds here at the Web 2.0 Summit conference in San Francisco, and we talked a bit about the company’s change in focus.

Leeds, first of all, said that he was sorry that it didn’t make sense for Ask to continue to build its own search engine from scratch. He pointed out, accurately, that Ask had a history of doing inventive stuff that later showed up in in its larger competitors. (Parts of this 2007 Ask redesign look like a blueprint for Google and Bing in 2010.) He said that made it tough for a smaller site such as Ask to compete based on pure innovation, and factored into the company’s decision to outsource search.

Users, Leeds told me, won’t see a sudden change as Ask stops crawling the Web itself–there won’t be one big day when it flips a switch and goes from Ask search to Someone Else’s search. (Ask isn’t saying whose search results it’ll be using; it has a deal with Google for search advertising.) Instead, the site will evolve, and search will still be a major part of the experience even though it’ll be someone else’s engine.

Oh, and there’s now an Ask.com iPhone app, which lets you speak to ask a question. An Android version is in the works.

That’s what it’s doing today with a new version that melds traditional search with Q&A features along the lines of Aardvark. The Q&A part is still in an invite-only preview, but you can see the new emphasis on questions and answers already: For instance, the home page now sports a question of the day, posed as a Trivial Pursuit-like multiple-choice quiz. (The inaugural one: “When did Bugs Bunny first say “What’s up, Doc”?)

The notion of mashing up classic search and an answer service is interesting, at least–and certainly different from anything Google is doing.

The new Ask replaces a not-particularly distinctive version that was launched in October 2008. That one superseded one from June of 2007 that I really liked–and which, with its left-hand sidebar, now feels like a preview of the interface that both Google and Bing later adopted. And the new emphasis on questions is reminiscent of the original incarnation of the site back in the 1990s, when it was known as Ask Jeeves.

I don’t know if Ask plans to run ads for its latest makeover, but it also has a long history of TV commercials with conflicting messages about just what the site is–or, sometimes, no discernible message at all.

I’m rooting for the new Ask.com for one simple reason: I like competition. And with Microsoft and Yahoo pooling their search resources, Ask is poised to become the third biggest search company. It’s going to be a very distant number three-ComScore says that its current market share in the US is 3.46 percent–but here’s hoping that the new approach is appealing enough that I don’t end up writing about yet another all-new Ask.com any time soon.

After the jump, lists from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.com–sadly but unsurprisingly, the gent to the right hit number one on three out of the four charts. And just for the heck of it, I’ll tell you about the searches that bring folks to Technologizer, absolutely none of which involve deceased celebrities, reality TV, or infectious diseases.

Google’s Zeitgeist lists mostly track the fastest-riding searches–those that received the biggest increase compared to 2008. The list is very, very international–in fact, I’d never heard of four of the ten terms until now. (I’ve linked to explanatory material, just in case you’re as out of it as I was.)

Fastest Rising Google Searches (Global)

1. michael jackson
2. facebook
3. tuenti
4. twitter
5. sanalika
6. new moon
7. lady gaga
8. windows 7
9. dantri.com.vn
10. torpedo gratis

Yahoo put together a particularly ambitious year in review package, with lots of lists (even one of Obama-related queries). They appear to focus on the U.S., though–and don’t seem to be as trend-based as Google’s–so there are fewer surprises. (It’s worthwhile to be reminded of what a surging sea of Americans find worth searching for, I guess.) There was only one search in the top ten that mystified me.

Top 10 Overall Yahoo Searches for 2009

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twilight
3. WWE
4. Megan Fox
5. Britney Spears
6. Naruto
7. American Idol
8. Kim Kardashian
9. NASCAR
10. Runescape

Bing released just one list–of “Trending Topics“–and while Microsoft didn’t explain its methodology or scope, it’s a very U.S.-centric lineup. (Or at least I assume that the entire planet isn’t deeply interested in Cash for Clunkers, Jon and Kate Gosselin, and Billy Mays.)

Top Bing Trending Topics

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twitter
3. Swine Flu
4. Stock Market
5. Farrah Fawcett
6. Patrick Swayze
7. Cash for Clunkers
8. Jon and Kate Gosselin
9. Billy Mays
10. Jaycee Dugard

Ask.com stuck true to its answer-centric roots and released a list of the most-asked questions (in several categories). The overall list includes questions which are smart to ask, ones that probably shouldn’t be asked, and ones that are pretty much unanswerable.

Ask.com’s Top Questions of 2009

1. How much should I weigh?
2. How do I get out of debt fast?
3. How do I get pregnant?
4. What is Twitter?
5. What is Miley Cyrus’ phone number?
6. What is the meaning of life?
7. When will the world end?
8. How long does marijuana stay in your system?
9. What are the symptoms of Swine Flu?
10. What time is it?

After perusing all these top tens, I was inspired to publish one of my own. Here’s a list of the queries at the above search engines and others that have brought Web searchers to Technologizer in the first eleven months of the year. I’ll betcha you couldn’t have predicted most of them.

Technologizer’s Top Ten Searches of 2009 (So Far)

1. Swoopo (this article by Ed Oswald is one of our all-time hits)
2. Windows 7 download
3. Gmail down
4. iTunes Home Sharing
5. AT&T strike (this post, also by Ed, has received 300 comments to date)
6. Google Toolbar for Chrome (there’s no such thing, but people look for it every day)
7. BlackBerry Storm vs. iPhone
8. Celebrities on Twitter
9. iPhone tethering
10. Verizon Droid

I wonder if anything will happen in December to dramatically skew any of the full-year results…and if any of the search engines will update us if it does?

With that in mind, my instinct is not to judge the user-generated Bing jingle video that won Microsoft’s contest too harshly. TechCrunch’s MG Siegler compares it to Hell; I just find it…odd. (Possibly intentionally so, and odd in a catchy way, at least.) And except for the fact that the lyrics wouldn’t scan, it could be about any other search engine on the planet, from Google to a tenth-stringer like Mamma.

(I’m not going to stoop for criticizing the ad for the fact that the queries shown, such as “Learn to dance like Jonathan,” don’t provide useful results in Bing or any other search engine.)

Also looking on the bright side: It’s nowhere near as odd and ineffective as years and years of Ask.com ads that cost that company way, way more money than the $500 that Microsoft paid its contest winner.

Another plus: Bing’s new singing, dancing spokesman doesn’t vomit onscreen.

(Full disclosure: Bing is an advertiser on this site, and I’m a contributor to the Bing-sponsored BingTweets.)

Here’s what you now get at uk.Ask.com:

Schwartz’s story quotes Ask.com as saying the sort of things you’d expect it to say: that this is a new-and-improved Jeeves (he’s computer-rendered!) representing a new-and-improved search engine, that Jeeves’ name recognition is extremely high in the UK, and that it has no plans to to bring him back in the states. All of which makes sense. But I kind of hope that he makes his return here, too–the original positioning of the site was the only one that was memorable and made intuitive sense, and I remain steadfast in the belief that it’s almost always a mistake to try and rename anything. If VW can bring back the Rabbit after all these years, there would be no shame in Jeeves getting his old gig back.

(Ask spokesman Nicholas Graham did tell Schwartz that going to AskJeeves.com gets you Ask.com with Jeeves hanging out on the home page–if I’d known that, I’d forgotten about it. Betcha the number of people who do that every day is much higher than zero.)

Also, is it just me, or does this latest version of Jeeves bear an uncanny resemblance to his ultimate boss, IAC chairman and CEO Barry Diller?

Do a search, and you get a page with filled with modules dedicated to news, images, YouTube videos, Yahoo Answers, Google (sic!) Blog Search, Wikipedia data, and more. The results you get are based in part on the sort of topic you searched for: For instance, when I searched for “Paris,” content from Lonely Planet and Panoramio images of the city were near the top.

Can I pick a few nits, though?

–Oddly enough, the one thing that Glue doesn’t include are plain ol’ Web search results, from Yahoo or anybody else. This is a separate service from search, but I’d much rather get at least a few search results as part of the package. (With Ask.com, the integrated pages were simply Ask’s primary search interface, so you always got search results.)

–Glue sometimes throws in modules only vaguely related to the subject at hand–for instance, when I searched for “Rutherford B. Hayes,” I got a module of Memeorandum links to stories about current politics.

–There weren’t Glue pages at all for some of my searches, such as “Columbia University.” In those situations, Glue offers to give you results from Yahoo Search. (Ask.com’s approach was more sophisticated–it gave you a few modules or a lot of them, but it always gave you something.)

Like Ask.com’s old format, Glue competes with Google’s Universal Search feature, which weaves results of different types into standard search results rather than breaking them out into modules. I like that approach, too. But I’m glad to have Glue, and hope that Yahoo gives it enough love that it grows and gets better with time. If you check it out, lemme know what you think.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2008/11/20/yahoo-glue-its-like-last-years-askcom-and-thats-good/feed/ 0 Harry McCracken yahoogluelogo http://technologizer.com/2008/10/11/the-t-list-blackberry-storm-rising/ http://technologizer.com/2008/10/11/the-t-list-blackberry-storm-rising/#comments Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:38:35 +0000 Harry McCracken http://technologizer.wordpress.com/?p=2849 ]]> The T-Mobile G1, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and now the BlackBerry Storm. The iPhone-like touchscreen phones are coming at us fast and furious. And while the Storm doesn’t look to be the mythical “iPhone killer” that folks like to talk about, it’s the most interesting iPhone rival from a hardware standpoint.

Like the T-List? Read it as a feed.

But…

After I finished up that post, I happened across an article in the UK’s Guardian about a new Ask.com ad campaign that coincides with the update to the search engine, and it got me thinking. Ask is far from the largest search engine, but it may be the most heavily-advertised one–for years, it’s attempted to make inroads against Google in part through multiple barrages of TV spots. But Ask, which in its Ask Jeeves days at least had a distinct personality, leaps from advertising message to advertising message with abandon, always in search of a new way to differentiate itself from the crowd but never holding onto a message for long. After the jump, a retrospective.

This 2005 ad, from the beginning of the end of the Ask Jeeves days, uses American Idol curiosity William Hung and promises you’ll “get what you’re searching for”–which is not a differentiating point but the basic promise made by every search engine since the beginning of time.

This one, from 2006, involves Bigfoot trying to impress a girl. The message–”Use Tools. Feel Human”–appears to be a subtle reference to the fact that Ask.com offers more way to customize your searching than Google does. But I wondered at the time whether that message tended to play to Google’s strengths: Google is so good it doesn’t need much in the way of features other than a Google Search button and an I’m Feeling Lucky One.

Another “Use Tools. Feel Human.” ad that resorts to the last refuge of a product in search of a message: an ape spokesperson:

This 2006 ad takes what might be called the Seinfeld/Churro approach: It has almost nothing to do with the product. It’s barely an ad for search engines in general, let alone one that provides a reason to try Ask.

Here’s yet another 2006 ad–this one plays up Apostolos Gerasoulis as the creator of Ask.com (actually, he was cofounder of Teoma, a search engine that Ask acquired and turned into its ExpertRank algorithm). He says that if you’re trying to escape a bear, you shouldn’t use any search engine. But if you do, it should be Ask. Okay…

This 2007 ad has a preroll that identifies it as the work of ad agency Crispin, Porter, and Bogusky–the same folks responsible for Microsoft’s current Windows ads. It’s a soft sell that–like many Ask ads–doesn’t mention Ask until the end. And it seems to think that TV watchers will understand the notion of a search algorithm and be excited about the possibility of Ask’s being powerful…which seems like a lot to ask of TV watchers.

Also by Crispin, Porter, and Bogusky, this 2007 ad may be the most entertaining one ever made for a search engine, and it possibly deserves brownie points for involving a search that’s probably all too representative of real ones. Like the previous one, it throws in a slogan–”Experience Instant Getification”–that I’d forgotten Ask ever had. It’s practically the opposite of the claim that Ask was making just a few months earlier, when it seemed to be arguing that Ask was superior because it let you drill down into searches and explore related ideas.

Also from 2007, this ad is for the Ask.com redesign from that year which I liked a lot. It involves a search for musician KT Tunstall, takes on Google more or less explictly without quite mentioning its name, and is shockingly straightforward, showing how you can listen to Tunstall music without ever leaving your Ask search results. Very cool…but today’s new version of Ask.com doesn’t have this feature anymore. (Yahoo, meanwhile, recently introduced something similar, though it doesn’t seem to work for KT.)

This 2007 ad was part of a controversial UK guerilla marketing campaign that didn’t always mention Ask and which seemed to boil down to “Try us, we’re not Google!”

I have no idea what’s going on here except that once again it involves a monkey.

And finally, here’s a new ad for the new Ask.com–I can’t figure out how to embed it, so clicking on the image below takes you to the Guardian site for viewing. It starts Fat Pat, a character from the BBC’s Little Britain sitcom, and aside from the weirdness, basically encourages people to type in questions and says they’ll get immediate answers–which is the premise that Ask Jeeves was founded on in 1996.

So that’s a quick history of Ask.com advertising over the past three years or so. Pretty schizophrenic, and not very successful…at least if market share is any gauge, and it is. (Google, incidentally, got where it is without advertising itself, though rumor has it that it may begin soon.)

After all this time, one of the most famous things about Ask.com is still that it used to be Ask Jeeves. Is it utterly insane to broach the idea of it returning to the old familiar moniker? Probably, but Ask marketing has been so random that it wouldn’t be that huge a leap. And if Volkswagen can bring back the Rabbit nameplate after a couple of decades, convincing Jeeves to come out of retirement would not be without precedent…

It would seem that consumers didn’t greet a radically different Ask.com as warmly as I did–Comscore data for August 2008 shows Ask with 4.5 percent of the search market, down from 5 percent in May 2007, right before that redesign. Fifteen months later, Ask has released another new version, and it’s dumped the divvied-results feature in favor of something that looks a lot more like Google, previous versions of Ask, and most every other search engine on the planet.

Here’s a screen I captured of the Ask.com I dug back when it was new, and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was in the news, so I searched for his name:

And here’s the new Ask’s results for the same query:

Lots of little changes: The blocks for Images, Video, and Encyclopedia on the right-hand side are gone. But the new Ask wove image results into the Web results–just as Google often does. Options for “Narrow Your Search” and “Expand Your Search” are gone, and Related Searches have been moved from the left-hand side to the right, and there are three times as many of them. Tabs for Images, News, and other specialized results have been moved from that left-hand pane that doesn’t exist any more to above the main results–a lot closer to Google’s presentation.

Also new, and neat: A link to related questions at Ask Q&A, a Yahoo Answers-style feature. And both old Ask.com and new Ask.com–for the search above and lots of others–lead off the results not with a standard Web result but with a little box with a snippet of information and links to related sites.

So what else is new? Well, Ask is encouraging folks to type in queries in the form of questions and see what happens. But the two examples it provides–”Is Cops on TV tonight?” and “What causes headaches?“–don’t provide results that are particularly spectacular. The former results did include a link to a Fox Network schedule, but I had to find that link, click on it, and then scroll until I found the information for Cops. (When Ask suggested the search, I kinda wondered if the schedule information would show up right in the results.) The latter query also doesn’t provide an answer right in the results–actually, its results are very similar to Google’s, and information on the causes of headaches is just as far away.

I tried a bunch of other searches of my own, and didn’t find results that were enough different from or enough better than Google’s to form a strong opinion of how Ask compares–though I did note that the first result was often the same for both services (random example: here’s “How often should I water my lawn?” in Ask and Google).

Ask also says that its new version is faster: I can’t do a meaningful comparison, but for what it’s worth, the new version seems plenty zippy.

Search junkies will find more features in Ask than in Google: One I haven’t mentioned yet is previews of sites that let you see a pop-up glimpse of what they look like before leaving your results:

And Ask retains its search suggestions, a feature that it had long before Google’s recent rollout of the practically-identical Google Suggest. With both Ask and Google’s versions, though, I find the search queries that the engines give me as I type as much intriguing as useful in most cases. And it’s fascinating to compare the recommendations. Here’s what I got from Ask when I began to type “How should I…”

And here’s Google:

As far as I can tell, both Ask and Google users are really interested in their hair and investments, but Ask users eat more pomegranates and Google users are (eek!) more likely to contemplate ending it all.

There’s one aspect of Ask that I find both confusing and annoying. Like most search engines, including Google, it usually tops search results with a few Sponsored Results (read: ads). But if frames them in a light green box that’s so incredibly faint that I didn’t see it at all until I squinted, and even then I wasn’t positive whether it was really there:

Compare that to the yellow box around Google’s sponsored results:

Whether Ask made the box so faint in order to make it tough for its users to tell an ad from a non-sponsored result, I don’t know. But I do know that this presentation diminishes the effectiveness of the new version’s emphasis on putting useful information right at the top of the organic results, since it’s hard to tell where the sponsored results end and the organic ones begin.

What’s the bottom line on the new Ask? It’s got some nice touches and interesting features that make it worth a look–and no matter how much you love Google, I recommend trying other search engines from time to time, just so you know what’s out there and so that Google never develops a stranglehold on the market that’s based more on inertia than quality. But the new Ask.com is a less distinctive choice than the old one–it’s rearranged things in ways that are more Google-esque than before.

If that’s what research told them Web searchers want, then it’s hard to argue with the decision, I guess…but you gotta wonder whether the search engine that succeeds in chipping away at Google’s dominance will be one that’s rather like Google, as the new Ask is, or a whole lot different in fundamental ways…which is the direction Ask seemed to be going until now.