untangling_the_web

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Ask Basic Search
http://www.ask.com/
Ask assumes as its default that multiple search terms are joined by the AND
. operator, so that a search on the keywords [windows explorer] will find all the
webpages that contain both search terms.
Ask will not return any results if there is no webpage containing all the search
terms. Try this query to see what I mean:
[kong spektioneer synecdoche]
Ask does not appear to limit the number of search terms.
Ask is not case sensitive. There does not appear to be anything you can do about
this.
Ask does not offer word stemming or truncation, i.e., searching for variations of
search terms. Ask searches for exactly the term as you enter it, e.g., a search for
[window] will not search for [windows].
Ask automatically clusters search results. Multiple hits from the same site are
indented and there is usually an option to see more results from a specific site.
Ask permits the use of the OR operator in simple search. The OR needs to be
capitalized.
Beyond the use of the OR operator in its simple search, Ask does not support
boolean search.
Searchers can delimit phrases using double-quotes. For example, if I search on:
[the last king of france]
without double-quotes, Ask will ignore the "the" and the "of' in its search. I noticed
that the results from this search are more relevant than the ones I received from
Google for the same query. If I enclose the same query in double-quotes, Ask will
search on exactly the phrase ["the last king of france"], and the first hit links to a site
that lists all the Kings of France, where Louis XVIII can be readily identified.
Enclosing searches in double-quotes is much more effective for finding precise
results than relying on automatic phrase searching.
Ask appears to ignore stop words outside double quotes only when other search
terms are used. These two searches will return identical results:
[the last king of france] [last king france]
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