untangling_the_web

DOClD: 4046925
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Ask
During 2006 Teoma and Ask Jeeves ceased to exist as separate search sites and
merged under the Ask.com umbrella. I had never been impressed with Ask Jeeves,
which was one of the few sites that continued to try to respond to users questions,
though not very successfully. Teoma was always an "also ran" in the world of
search. However, when Barry Diller, former Chairman and CEO of Paramount
Pictures and Fox, Inc.'s, and his lAC/Interactive Corp. acquired Ask Jeeves this
year, things changed dramatically. The name was shortened to Ask, the annoying
butler icon was gone, along with the Ubiquitous ads and usually unfulfilled promise of
answers to natural language queries. Ask incorporated Teoma's search algorithm,
ExpertRank, and the Teoma site went away. Now, Ask.com has become a major
player.
One of the most striking differences is obvious as soon as you run a search. Instead
of a list of sponsored links, which Google, Live Search, and Yahoo all display, Ask
shows "zoom related search" links, designed to help users either narrow or expand a
search. Of course, Ask still serves up ads with its search results, but the search
company is putting the primary focus on free search results and not on sponsored
results.
Customizing Ask's Settings
Ask offers six general Settings:
1. Locations: you may enter a specific location, including a street address or
a city, state, and zip code for the US. This is an optional feature and you
can sign up for an account if you want to enter multiple locations. This
information is used to provide tailored search results relevant to your
location.
2. Displaying results: Ask lets you see as few as 10 and up to 100 results per
page. There is also an option to open results in a new window.
3. Content filtering: Unlike most search engines, Ask automatically filters
adult content; the two options are to alert the user when content is filtered
and provide a link to it or to minimize adult content and not link to it.
4. Interface language: if you are more comfortable working in another
language, Ask can display in dozens.
5. Make Ask your Default Search Engine: In this case, you are telling your
browser to use Ask as the default search engine from the browser address
bar.
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