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Ask.com's new search engine has come up with what they call their "Ask 3D" engine - named for what they call the three dimensions of search: Expression, Results and Content.
Believe it or not, search is still one of the most underdeveloped areas in online and represents an enormous opportunity for improvement. It's true that Google helped to improve search engine results when Sergey and Larry cried "there must be a better way!" back in 1998, but even their new search engine was limited in that they focused on what was the current paradigm of online searching. They made the results a little more relevant and certainly sped up the process of delivering the results. But they did very little to help in understanding the direction of someone's search.
Here's an example of how Ask.com is breaking out of the norm of search engine results and delivering something different and IMO better than what we get today. If someone searches for "tennis" on Google they get the following type of results:
Likely I didn't search "tennis" to find a link to one of those sites. I was most likely trying to answer a question, such as "Who is seeded number 1 at Wimbledon this year" or "What are the rules of tennis" or "What are some tennis courts near my house that I can book". If we can agree that people aren't searching for links, but rather are searching to answer a question, then we can start to see the difference in what Ask.com is now producing. Here is a sample of what you get from Ask.com when you search for "tennis"
- A "Narrow Your Search" column on the left with suggestions such as:
- Tennis Rules
- Tennis History
- How to play tennis
- In the middle search area, the first result is "Latest Tennis Headlines", underneath which is essentially the same list of results to sites that Google listed
- On the right hand side you have Images, video, Shopping options and a definition for tennis straight from Wikipedia
Overall this is a MUCH better experience than what you get from Google. As what Ask.com is attempting to do is answer your question, which is a huge shift in what the other engines do. |
