Last week, during the SES conference in San Jose, Erik Collier, the VP of Product Management over at Ask.com, spoke about his company's newest application of semantic search technology, searchable TV listings. While I didn't have the opportunity to attend the conference and catch Erik's presentation in person, I did however read about it in his post over on the Ask.com Blog. The following are a few quotes from his post, and about this new search feature:

"Navigating TV listings in search of things like Olympic coverage can be a frustrating task. Not any more. With Ask.com it is now a real part of search. Straight from the Ask searchbox."

"Our Ask TV listings uses our patent-pending technology DADS (Direct Answers from Databases) to answer queries and questions from structured data feeds and databases. DADS provides highly accurate answers to queries which are relevant to a given topic. Instead of using traditional keyword search algorithms, our technology can deliver much deeper, more precise search results based on understanding of a query meaning rather than syntactical text matching."

"Ask TV answers queries ranging from "when is sports on tv this weekend" or "horror movies tonight" to "lindsay lohan on tv". Covering nearly 10,000 distinct stations and over 100,000 shows, our information is updated daily - and it can be personalized and customized to any location and cable provider in the USA."

I'm a big fan of Ask.com and of their search technology. While they're currently fourth in the overall scheme of things - behind search giants Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft - I personally believe they have what it will take - talent, ideas, technology, and fortitude - to eventually surpass their competition. I enjoy keeping up-to-date on Ask.com's advances in the search space, and so after reading Erik's post on "searchable TV listings" I quickly headed on over to their search engine to give it a shot.

My experience was exactly as I had expected it would be... perfect! I started by placing a search for something that is near and dear to my heart: "Chicago Cubs on TV". As a fan, I certainly do my part to cheer on my team whenever they play... especially because they're doing so well this year. Go Cubs, Go! I won't jinx their season with talks of the post-season or (cough) a World Series ring, but I will say that I am very excited for their chances at making something happen. Anyway, Ask.com delivered the following listings:

Nice! Right? I can see that the cubbies are going to be finishing off their current series with the Phillies today and tomorrow, and that coverage starts at 1:00pm and 2:30pm respectively. I can even see which television station I'll need to turn-in to.

One other feature that I like is the "More TV Results" option which sits as a text-link just under those two listings. Did you see that in the image above? Clicking on that link provided me with roughly a 2-week glance at the team's upcoming television schedule.

Awesome.

I can see that we (the cubs) will be playing the Cardinals in St. Louis in September - that's a game that I will definitely want to play close attention to... especially so close to the end of the season.

Just for kicks, I did a couple of other searches: "Seinfeld on TV" and "Nicolas Cage on TV" and had a very similar experience. With the Seinfeld search I was able to see which specific episodes would be showing and on which TV stations, and with my Nicolas Cage search I was able to see which of his million great movies would be playing tonight and tomorrow.

While it's obvious that "searchable TV listings" isn't the golden ticket that is going to catapult Ask.com to the top of the list - as far as search engines go - it is however a really cool and relevant idea. Overall I thought that the new search feature functioned well, and that it was both easy-to-use and understand. Congrats Ask.com for releasing a great new search feature.