Exclusive - Ask Jeeves on Search, the Butler and Google
I had a chance to get out to Emeryville, CA and meet-up with Jim Lanzone, Senior Vice President, Search Properties at Ask Jeeves. We had a chance to chat about Ask's recent MyJeeves launch and how they see future products developing.

The personalization offered by MyJeeves is just the start of a long list of upgrades and developments they hope to roll out over the next few months (and years). They've already hinted that a new desktop offering will be with us by the year's end, but the most interesting developments are likely to come over the next few years.

Leading the way in technology

There is no doubt that Ask has the people and technology in place to ensure a bright future for the search engine industry. If they had the same revenues and staff count as say, Google or Yahoo, they would likely see themselves as the #1 search site in the world. Unfortunately, they're not privy to those resources, Ask plans to continue to innovate and improve search technology to grow its market share.

Speaking to Gary Chevsky, Director of Engineering, Knowledge Systems for Ask (the oldest employee of the company and its founding architect) it's clear to see that Ask has some bright minds at their disposal. They clearly see a future where your desktop understands who you are and what your preferences may be. That same desktop would then help you search for web pages, files or even the latest blog feeds all while fully understand which results are likely to match your intentions and needs.

That partnership with Google

While the acquisition of Teoma a few years back has certainly helped Ask Jeeves to stay competitive in the crawled search arena, there are no signs that they are in any hurry to offer a sponsored ad product. Jim tells me that their relationship with Google is strong and that they get to keep a large percentage of the revenues generated from the partnership (some estimate 70-80%). When I asked him if they might severe that relationship in the future, Jim pointed to the fact that they were able to run sponsored ads and not have the overhead that would come from managing the efforts themselves. Ask would need to increase their market share to a number that would then make is feasible for them to create their own search ads (he didn't tell me what that magic number is).

The butler stays

We chatted about the recent "extreme makeover" that their mascot, Jeeves, had been thru recently and I ask Jim if perhaps the "end was nigh" for the likeable British butler. "More than 70% of our users have no negative thoughts of Jeeves" he told me. In fact, Jeeves had helped Ask to establish itself as a major search engine and that the butler was popular in England and Asia.

Shaking the "Ask Us a Question" reputation.

But what of the association that Ask has of being a "ask a question" search engine. You may remember that when Ask first launched, they plugged themselves as the search engine you could ask a question and get multiple answers. That format has since fallen from favor by search engine users, but Jeeves still tries to shrug-off that image. Jim agreed that it had been a problem in the past and that even today some users are not sure if they need to format every search in the form of a question (btw "Is Jeeves gay" is still a popular questions asked). However, Ask has adapted well and now most users know that they can ask a question if they wish, or simply enter a few keywords just like any other search engine. What's more, the user experience is greatly enhanced by Ask patented Smart Search technology which greatly improves the chances of a user finding the information they want.

It was certainly a fun visit and everyone I met appeared to be happy in their work. The office was brightly painted and at the time the staff were celebrating their impending move to larger offices. I certainly left there impressed by the people and the technology...the snazzy red Ask Jeeves binoculars given to me by Jim, also helped!
Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |