“Better” answers in Ask.com
Posted by Jacque on October 7th, 2008
Ask.com has enhanced the snippets for search results if the query is a question, says Google Operating System blog. The claim is that while snippets are usually excerpts that include the search query, Ask.com has replaced them with the actual answers.
“Presenting direct answers to your searches, front and center, has always been at the heart of the Ask.com experience, and we push further down that path today with the introduction of three new answer technologies: DADS, DAFS, and AnswerFarm. These technologies take both structured and unstructured data, and - instead of delivering a title and description for each document - they deliver answers,” explains Ask’s blog.
They say, “Our goal is to deliver the best answer to you, the first time, every time. We know that is a difficult goal and no search engine can always deliver with that precision 100% of the time, but we think we’re getting closer and closer to the ‘bullseye’. We also believe you will agree once you’ve tried out our new version.”
When I searched for how to cook turkey, I got a mixed bag of results, including some ads, some immediate answer snippets (see image), and some links to articles and recipes.
The new feature is part of a broader update that mixes specialized search results with organic web results, much like Google’s universal search.