03 April 2006

Is Ask ready to turn the Big Three in search into the Big Four?

It's been a rollercoaster ride for Ask, but if there's one thing the venerable old search player has shown itself to be, it is resilient. You can't keep a good butler down, even though you might retire him to the golf course.

And the updated Ask interface has been getting some favourable feedback. Users have noted that the adverts are less aggressive, fewer in number, and easier to tell from natural results. The emphasis has shifted away from the "ask a question" template and is now closer to the keywords list other search engines provide and which we've all grown used to.

In fact, so good is Ask's new approach that it has been seen in some camps to be better than Google - once acclaimed because of the simplicity of its layout and its prioritisation of natural search. The 'narrow/expand your search' options offered by Ask work excellently (unlike Altavista's doomed Prism experiment) and seem removed from the commercial pressure that Google's equivalent 'search sample' inserts from Froogle etc.

But, most importantly of all, the quality of the search results is sometimes startling - especially the 'smart answers' feature - and can easily rival the other search leaders. Far from being an also-ran, Ask is shaping up to show us a second (or is that third?) wind, and is still showing those young upstarts a thing or two too.

Time will tell whether it has the marketing muscle to capitalise on a much improved and more user friendly product.

The Wall Street Journal is just one of the converts, check out their review here:

http://online.wsj.com / public / article / SB114367958939011763-7gXlBH7n4a2aoUllWZIDJWLsuqQ_20070329.html?mod=blogs

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