posted by Karl Ribas on Friday, August 29, 2008
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.
Labels: ask, industry-news
posted by Karl Ribas on Thursday, June 01, 2006
Last night Ask.com staked its claim in Blog search atmosphere as it launched its new, long awaited Blog search service. Like with most Blog search services, Ask is trying to capitalize on the keen interest in the topics and debates covered by blogs that aren't easy to find on traditional online news sites. Both Google, which acquired Blogger in 2003, and Yahoo! launched their blog search sites last year, and personally speaking... its nice to see that Ask decided to finally join the party.
The question remains though... what does Ask bring to the table of Blog search that its competitors don't? Well I had a chance to play around with this new service and in addition to the many small features we've come to expect from Ask, 4 features clearly stand out to me.
1) Unique Indexing and Ranking Methods
Instead of crawling the Web for blog postings to build an index to search like others do, Ask is using the index already created and updated by subscribers to its popular Bloglines site for searching, subscribing to, creating and sharing blogs and news feeds. This feature will significantly reduce the amount of blog spam that appears within most Blog search engines, as well as enable Ask to offer fresher blog search results than those offered by its competitors.
2) A "Sort By" Feature
Users can sort search listings according to relevance, most recent, and even popularity (according to Bloglines).
3) Binoculars Feature
This Feature allows users the ability to preview most of the site/blog post without having to leave the search results page. Simply roll your mouse over the "binoculars" image and a pop-up appears.
4) "Subscribe" and "Post To" Options
Bloglines users, as well as those who use rival Blog and RSS feed readers (like Google's and Yahoo's), can subscribe to the blogs that show up in the search results, and without having to leave the page. Users can also post their search listings to Bloglines or Yahoo's Delicious or Digg.
The following image highlights the Binoculars feature as well as the preview pop-up, and the "Subscribe" and "Post To" options.
The new blog search service is expected to be integrated into Ask's Bloglines site, which is similar to what Google has done with Blogger.
Thus far, I find myself really enjoying Ask's Blog search. I find the search results far more relevant (with less spam occurrences) than what Google and Yahoo! currently offer. It will be interesting to see how things progress from here.
Labels: ask, industry-news
posted by Karl Ribas on Friday, February 24, 2006
The week has been a sad time for the Internet. As I am sure most of you already know, Ask Jeeves will be saying goodbye to their corporate icon of 10 years. That's right... Jeeves, the butler mascot for Ask Jeeves, is retiring from his duties as ask's "answer man", and the search engine is slimming down to its long used but little promoted Ask.com domain name.
The Internet's favorite butler has been serving up answers since its creation in November of 1995. From the start, Jeeves was different than the other search services of the day. The idea behind Jeeves was not to create yet another search engine or directory, but to offer a question/answering service... basically a virtual online concierge. At that time, AltaVista (now owned by Yahoo!) had just publicly launched, and Yahoo!, although popular, was still a small operation and hosted on servers provided by Netscape, the web's major powerhouse of the time. My how times have changed!
Looking back, one of my favorite memories of Jeeves would have to be his participation in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Ask created a giant sized version of their butler character and floated it proudly amongst the New York City Skyline. Jeeves is the first Internet character (and I believe he's the only) to have participated in this traditional event.
So why now? Why is Jeeves hanging up his 10+ year old suit at a time when his popularity still continues to grow? Well, my guess is that it has a lot to do with the IAC / Ask Jeeves acquisition that took place last year. The butler and his future with the company must have been left out of the negotiations. To me, this just all seems like really bad timing. With Jeeves' expanded search technology and its recently added paid placement program (PPC) the company is literally in a position to launch a full-out assult on search giants Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.
Oh well, at least Jeeves' didn't just leave with out saying "Goodbye". The people over at Ask created a retirement website where visitors can read Jeeves' official resignation letter, cast a vote for what he should do during his retirement, and even sign his retirement card. In addition, Ask put together this very funny going away video.
It's funny, when you consider that Jeeves just a static drawing of a butler-ish figure on a website, how much the Jeeves character has come to mean for people over the years. There are people who take Jeeves very literally. They think of Jeeves as the guy behind their searches, a cartoon man giving them answers. Jeeves is what makes the site unique for these people, pure and simple. On the other hand, there are people who reel back at the very notion of Jeeves, who think he signifies weak technology, slows down the site, and embodies over-commercialization and over promise. They would never use a site that had a butler on it.
To me, Jeeves was the go-to-guy on the Internet, a place to go to ask questions and it will be difficult to ever think of him as anything more.
So what does a mid-aged search engine butler do after he retires? Does he golf? Does he fish? Does he take in a few ball games? Does he become one of those slow Sunday-driving elderly that get mad when you step on their lawn? Well, whatever comes of Jeeves, I wish him all the best.
Peace out Jeeves... you'll be missed.Labels: ask
posted by Karl Ribas on Friday, January 27, 2006
This past week Ask Jeeves launched its first proprietary image search technology, a service which features major improvements to its image search ranking algorithms and its new "related search suggestions" feature. Jeeves has been involved with picture search since 2003 and until now the service was powered by Picsearch, a third-party provider of image search capabilities.
Jeeves' new image search technology was developed internally and uses many of the same elements that have made its main web search unique and popular. For instance, the two search types share the same algorithmic search ranking feature which clusters the web into topic areas and determines the ranking of pages within that area.
In addition, the Ask Jeeves brings new imaging search technology and know-how to the table which will assist in the measuring of specific imagery attributes such as image type, shape, brightness, and contrast level to determine picture quality.
Image search is offered by all of the major search engines, and people tend to think it's a fairly generic service, with little difference in results between any of the engines. When in fact, Image search is tricky because images lack most of the clues search engines use to find relevant text documents that match our queries. Because images are made up of patterns of bits rather than words, search engines can't directly "look" at an image and figure out what it represents.Instead, search engines look for other clues, such as filenames, text immediately above or below an image (potential captions), the overall context of a page an image appears on, and so on.
So what separates Ask Jeeves from the likes of Google or Yahoo!? Well, Jeeves image search is doing all this, but it's also applying its Teoma ranking system to find sites that have a broad representation of images and topics. This will help to identify those sources that have the greatest degree of "authority" for a particular topic to help determine image relevance. This is truly great feature and one that should help good ol' Jeeves to stand out amongst the other image search engines.
All in all this was a great step forward for the Internet's favorite Butler. Ask Jeeves has definitely taken image search to a whole new level.Labels: ask, industry-news
posted by Karl Ribas on Friday, July 29, 2005
The Internet's favorite butler, Ask Jeeves, reported this past week that they have plans to soon market their own Pay Per Click advertising platform in what I'm guessing is a way to break away from paid-placement partner Google Adwords. The competitive sponsored search market remains dominated by Google and search giant Yahoo!, but that does'nt seem to be stopping anyone from attempting to "dip into their Kool-Aid". In March, MSN, which receives sponsored search listings from Yahoo!, also announced that it would be creating its own paid search platform, AdCenter. View my MSN Unleashes its One, Two Punch! post for more information on MSN's AdCenter.Jeeves' new platform will be primarily based on keyword bidding, but other "measure of relevance" parameters may indeed be factored into the advertiser's ultimate cost. I'm guessing that their looking at using a system similar to that of Adwords where elements like click-through rate will also affect the cost per click and the average positioning of an ad. Also, it was announced that Jeeves' paid search listings are expected to look similar to that of Google's system and will co-exist right along Google ads, at least for remainder of their contract which doesn't expire until 2007.It's no secret that Jeeves has what it takes to go toe-to-toe with the likes of top contenders Yahoo!, Google, and MSN, which in my opinion is the best that search has to offer. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the year of the Butler, and by the end of it, Ask Jeeves was in a position to take away more of the popularity from the top dogs.Labels: ask, paid-search
posted by Karl Ribas on Friday, June 03, 2005
In what appears to be another attempt to outshine rivals Yahoo! and Google in the search market, Ask Jeeves has added a couple of new features to its ever-growing search engine capabilities. The company has long operated in the shadows of the larger search providers, despite financial success of its own.
Of these new features, one, called Zoom, builds on Jeeves' long-standing clustering technology, which analyzes search results into concepts or ideas related to any given query. Zoom lets searchers narrow or broaden the field of search results, as well as view results for related concepts. For example, for a search on the term "cancer," visitors can narrow it to types of the disease, or they could expand it to related illnesses.
A second new feature centers on delivering better answers to direct questions -- for instance "Who shot John Lennon?" - - by "cleaning up" the unstructured data on the Web for accurate information.
There's no question to the fact that Ask Jeeves has kept pace in the feature wars of its rivals, but it has yet to win the trend that is the personality of Google or the enormous audience that Yahoo! packs. The thing that I like most about Ask Jeeves (besides the Butler Image), as I am sure most of you do as well, is that they truly understand how the Internet is related through social networks. With this understanding they continue to refine their searching and indexing techniques to better fit the needs of these social networks. This alone is what makes their search engine results editorially different and easier to navigate through than say those of Google's or Yahoo!'s.
Needless to say, I believe that this is the year of the butler. As long as Ask Jeeves continues to improve on their core search technology and produce the advanced features, like those discussed above, than I have no doubt that they will receive the true recognition they deserve. Its just about that time for good o;' Jeeves to leap out of the shadows and into the mist of what is turning out to be a true search engine war.Labels: ask, industry-news
posted by Karl Ribas on Friday, March 04, 2005
Announced this past Wednesday, the web portal Lycos has decided to end its long term relationship with Yahoo! and its Inktomi unit and has further selected to use the search technology of the Internet's favorite butler, Jeeves. As explained by Adam Sciroco of Lycos, a search-relationship with Ask Jeeves would provide Lycos with broader searching solutions than what Yahoo! was currently providing. The decision to switch from Yahoo! to Ask Jeeves came as no shock to me as Jeeves technology is already being used on other Lycos web properties, but I am unsure if I actually agree with it.
It has been reported as to what "searching solutions" Yahoo! was unable to provide, but in my opinion, Lycos just pulled their starting pitcher out of the ninth inning of game 7 of the World Series with 1 out away from a no-hitter. Ok maybe that's a bit extreme, but my point is that Lycos replaced a perfectly good search-relationship for one that remains to be taken seriously and for what?
Don't get me wrong Ask Jeeves has great search tools and resources and currently does a fine job of syndicating its search technologies and advertising products to other websites, including, InfoSpace, BellSouth, Mamma.com and CNET Networks--the parent company of News.com, but in my opinion, and being as though it is the only one that matters on this blog, Jeeves is not on the same playing level as Yahoo! Search is.
Either way, it will be interesting to see what Lycos has in store for their portal, but for now only time will tell on this matter.
Labels: ask, industry-news, yahoo
posted by Karl Ribas on Friday, February 18, 2005
Ask Jeeves reported on Tuesday of last week that they have bought the privately held and popular Bloglines, a site developed for searching millions of personal web pages and aggregating news headlines. In an effort to keep pace with its rivals Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, Ask Jeeves plans to build a specialized blog search engine and fold the service into its various properties, including personalization product MyJeeves and the portal Excite.com.
As we all know weblogs (blogs) can be used in a number of ways, but ultimately they are used by those Internet users who feel the need to express themselves and share with the world their thoughts and opinions on the many subjects that make up their everyday lives. I for one enjoy reading the publishings of many other "bloggers" who share my interests and I applaud Mr. Jeeves for jumping on the "blog band-wagon" and getting a piece of the action.
Just this past week, I caught an Ask Jeeves commercial featuring the very funny American Idol reject William Hung, you know... "she bangs, she bangs", which I found to be pretty hilarious. Apparently this is one of several TV advertisements to be released in the near future where each ad will feature a regular person seeking everyday information from an expert or icon of some kind. Of course, they don't get the answer they need because they should've gone to the icon with world-class search technology: Jeeves.
It's not too often that you will see the funny, lighter-side of many corporations and a television plug like the one I saw is a great way to say "you have questions, Jeeves has answers."
All in all, I believe good ol' Jeeves is truly shaping himself into a powerful search engine, a great resource for its users, and a true contender in the search engine wars.Labels: ask, blogging, industry-news
