FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
October 25, 2006
Search Engine Showdown
Ask.com, formerly AskJeeves.com, has been touting itself lately in commercials as a better search than Google. The company, owned by IAC, points to its special algorithm, its "narrow search" categories, and its topic clusters. Since I do research and reporting for Fast Company, I decided to conduct an experiment. Last week, I changed my homepage at the office to Ask.com.
At first it was disconcerting to see the red logo pop up. However, many times I found what I was looking for, and those "narrow search" categories can be somewhat useful, even if there are too few of them. But I lost track of the times I had to default to the little Google toolbar in my browser for complex searches when Ask.com didn't deliver. In those cases, Google got me closer to what I wanted. Sure, like the Ask.com ads say, there is a more civilized way of searching. Neither company has nailed it, though. The sheer page rank volume of Google--"Google bombs" and all--still outweighs Ask.com. Sadly, I ended up searching on Google for the Ask.com ads to find what I was looking for.
Now, if Google were to buy Ask.com and incorporate some of the technology into its search capabilities, that would be a promising experiment.
Posted by Alyssa Danigelis at October 25, 2006 4:29 PM | Category: internet + web |
2 Comments
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My experience with the two search engines has been similar. I use google for 90% of my search needs, and they are mostly based on key words.
I have found that ask.com generates better results when I have a question like: "what if this happens.." or "what is the difference between x and y".
Additionally, I would personally prefer the two to remain separate sites / companies and grow their respective technologies. There is a long road ahead and if the two merge, I am afraid one approach will over ride the other.
Web results are a commodity now...there are hundreds of search engines and the main search engines all syndicate their results to thousands of other search engines....so Web results are a commodity in every sense of the word? Why would I use google's toolbar? It blocks pop-ups? All toolbars are a commodity....I actually found one toolbar that does offer some value called the congoo netpass which gives free access to subscription content. So many people are literally not cognisent of the value of information on the web or the fact that web search results are just a commodity...