Ask.com launched an upgrade to the relevance and speed of its search engine today as well as a new beta Q&A feature that keeps a running list of questions people are asking on a particular topic.
The site has gone through several major renovations over the past few years, dropping its Jeeves character in 2006 and then launching a much more Google-like Ask3D last summer with a streamlined layout.
The “Next Generation of Ask.com” builds off of the previous Ask3D design but with more relevant answers appearing at the top of the results using several new advanced semantic search technologies.
Download speeds have also increased by 30 percent from last year.
You can now search for things like local TV schedules, concert and event info, health inquiries, jobs, and generic reference-type questions and get your answer at the top of the result listings without ever having to click into a site. Ask.com will either locate the question and answer pairs directly or form its own based on context.
The Q&A page is a bit more like Yahoo’s Answers which shows a preexisting list of questions and answers around a particular topic. Since these are all based on real searches, it’s a good way to get a feel for what people are talking about, similar to the appeal of Google trends or Twitter’s trending topics.
The homepage has also been cleaned up even more than before, losing the widget images so the page will load faster, and search results now integrate all types of media directly into the center panel.
This is all part of an ongoing evolution for Ask.com, which, while shadowed by the likes and drama of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, is still the 7th highest web property for August according to ComScore.
In addition to the product changes, Ask.com will be rolling out a new televised ad campaign today both in the U.S. and the U.K. The big question is whether or not this will be as controversial as last year's "Algorithm" ads that included references to the unabomber.
