Ask Jeeves Launches Next Generation Search Refining Technology
Hot off the press: Ask Jeeves will today launch two new search technology updates that will see it taking a step ahead of its peers. The developments come in an area that Ask's senior vice president of search properties, Jim Lanzone, refers to as "important innovations on some of our core search technologies, which will help our users find what they need faster than with other search engines."

While many search engines have been using “look over here” product launches to hide the fact that little has been done to advance core search technology, Ask has been quietly taking its Teoma search solution to the next level.

Ask will roll-out two new features today, “Zoom” and “Web Answers”. Zoom is a next generation navigation tool that offers suggestions to narrow and refine an entered search query (which Ask calls “zooming in”), or expand a search (“zooming out” according to the search engine) to explore new ideas. Zoom also allows you to identify specific names related to your original search. Zoom is visually represented on the Ask results page with suggestions that are categorized on the right side of the page into Narrow Your Search, Expand Your Search and Related Names.

You may think that Zoom is similar to Google Suggest or other technology, offered by smaller niche search engines such as Vivisimo, but it is clearly beyond current offerings. Zoom takes advantage of, and builds on, the unique clustering ability of Ask’s Teoma search engine technology, which breaks the web into topic communities. Zoom examines the relationships between these communities to identify and present conceptually-related topics to the searcher.

For example, with the query “Beatles,” zooming in with Narrow Your Search returns “Beatles Lyrics,” “Beatles History,” “Beatles and Biographies” and “Beatles Wallpaper.” Alternatively, by zooming out with Expand Your Search, suggestions include “Rolling Stones,” “Led Zeppelin,” “Beach Boys,” “Woodstock,” and even “1960’s” to help users clarify what they are looking for. Meanwhile, Related Names is able to isolate “John Lennon,” “Ringo Starr,” “Paul McCartney” and “George Harrison” as relevant suggestions. All of this is done without any human intervention and the suggestions all appear to be ordered based on the most likely to be clicked-on.

“Searchers don’t want to spend time to formulate and enter involved search terms. As a result, queries are frequently short or ambiguous,” said Daniel Read, vice president of product management at Ask Jeeves. “Zoom brings recommended queries to the user—suggestions that allow searches to be refined, or associated topics explored, with a click of a button. Zoom guides users to exactly what they are looking for fast.”

The second roll-out from Ask is called Web Answers and greatly expands on Ask’s proven Smart Search technology. Web Answers extends Ask’s direct-answering abilities by mining unstructured data in real time. The new capability increases relevance by revealing direct answers hidden within regular web pages. Unlike similar offerings from Google, which are compiled by human editors, Web Answers is compiled using Teoma technology.

“Web Answers allows Ask Jeeves to answer far more queries than would be possible using editors or structured databases,” continued Read. “By mining unstructured web data, we can tap the billions of pages in our index for answers.”

In displaying Web Answers, Ask took the unusual step of presenting the searcher with the answer as the top organic search result on the Ask Jeeves results page. Ask labels the result as a “Web Answer” and the “answer” is highlighted in context within the snippet of the web page. A user can then click-thru to the site to view the source of the answer. When multiple answers are found, Ask offers users an expanded list of answers, as defined by the web at-large.

According to Ask Jeeves they found that Web Answers improved the click-through rate on the top search result by more than 200%.

You can test the new Web Answers feature yourself by trying searches such as “Deadliest snake” or “largest lake in the world”.

Zoom and Web Answers are truly powerful tools. When Ask first demonstrated the pre-launch technology, I could not but help leaving their office feeling they had opened the door for search engines to turn their attention back to the features that users truly want; better core search results. With Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp finishing-up their due diligence on their proposed acquisition of Ask Jeeves, this new technology should be everything they need to put pen to paper and close the deal.

Note: While Ask Jeeves is a sponsor of Search Engine Lowdown, this post is not a paid placement. If the new technology sucked, we would tell you. It just so happens it's that good! :-)
Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |