On Friday, Ask.com launched a redesign of the search site, with an emphasis on turning up useful answers on the result page, rather than just links.
Ask.com is the seventh largest Internet property overall, with 58 million unique visitors, according to a comScore Media Metrix report in August.
Ask.com president Scott Garell told PC Magazine on Friday that the site update would not only enhance the relevance of its results, but also offer a trimmed-down user interface and a 30 percent speed improvement.
This release “represents a culmination of a lot of heads-down engineering and looking at what our users were doing on the site," said Garell. “Right now, a user doesn't get to the best answer until 3 to 4 clicks after the search box. We want to present the best answer the first time, every time."
Garell demonstrated three new patent-pending technologies used on site—DADS (Direct Answers from Database Search), DAFS (Direct Answers From Search), and AnswerFarm. The first two take advantage of semantic search techniques and direct access to structured data from databases, long-tail content, web extraction, and ranking technologies and apply them to the most frequently searched-on topics: Entertainment, Health and Nutrition, Jobs, and Reference. This means when a user enters queries such as “when will the Red Sox game be on TV tonight?" or “Who discovered plutonium?" the answer will be presented right on the first result page. If a user types in a rock band's name, such as Coldplay, he or she will see the group's upcoming concert schedule.
Ask.com is the seventh largest Internet property overall, with 58 million unique visitors, according to a comScore Media Metrix report in August.
Ask.com president Scott Garell told PC Magazine on Friday that the site update would not only enhance the relevance of its results, but also offer a trimmed-down user interface and a 30 percent speed improvement.
This release “represents a culmination of a lot of heads-down engineering and looking at what our users were doing on the site," said Garell. “Right now, a user doesn't get to the best answer until 3 to 4 clicks after the search box. We want to present the best answer the first time, every time."
Garell demonstrated three new patent-pending technologies used on site—DADS (Direct Answers from Database Search), DAFS (Direct Answers From Search), and AnswerFarm. The first two take advantage of semantic search techniques and direct access to structured data from databases, long-tail content, web extraction, and ranking technologies and apply them to the most frequently searched-on topics: Entertainment, Health and Nutrition, Jobs, and Reference. This means when a user enters queries such as “when will the Red Sox game be on TV tonight?" or “Who discovered plutonium?" the answer will be presented right on the first result page. If a user types in a rock band's name, such as Coldplay, he or she will see the group's upcoming concert schedule.
