Search engines like Google and Yahoo are excellent at returning relevant results in the SERPs for keyword phrases. It lacks, however, the ability to answer questions directly. This is where Ask Jeeves excels.
Ask Jeeves has been known for it’s ability to provide answers to questions written in plain question format. Instead of entering just keyword phrases, you can enter a question like “What is the highest waterfall in the world” and it will return the exact answer – Angel Falls in Venezuela. If you try this on Google, you’ll have to click around several more times on the SERPs to find the exact answer. This can be frustrating if you are short on time and need answers fast.
Ask Jeeves is based on the idea that the web is made up of multiple communities. By linking these related communities together, they improve their ranking systems to return relevant sites on the web with the answers you seek. By requiring sites to have relevant links from a number of sites within the community, they significantly decrease the likelihood of spam occuring.
In a recent interview with Ask Jeeves’ CEO at the August Search Engine Strategies 2005, Steve Berkowitz mentioned that they are focusing on core search building a superior search engine to enhance user experience. To accomplish this goal it is likely to recruit new talent much like what Google has done recently lately by hiring internet pioneer Vint Cerf. It will be making significant investments to make their technology better and even more useable to searchers. As a web searcher, this can only be good news as more attractive and useful search engine choices are made available.