IDG News reports that Ask.com is going back to its old AskJeeves roots, retooling its site to–among other changes–make it better handle natural language question-based search queries. The upgrade is part of Ask.com’s plan to lure away search users from Google and other, more popular search competitors. But is it too little too late?
In addition to the focus on natural language queries, or the ability of users to simply type in a question they want answered and see relevant results returned, Ask.com also made several other changes. The company says it’s improved its ability to extract data from Web pages; mix in results types like photos, news, images and videos; and tap a broader pool of data sources for queries about entertainment, jobs, health and reference information.
A quick test of the upgraded natural language search was confusing, however. When searching using the “lots of answers” beta portion of the site, which is supposedly where Ask.com’s natural language capabilities shine, the question “How much does a family of four spend on groceries a week?” returned no hits. But when the same question was posed on the “Web” portion of Ask.com, the first result was from WikiAnswers.com, providing the straightforward answer of “$600 a month.” But unfortunately for Ask.com, Google’s Web search returned the same answer just as quickly.
Ask.com will have to do better than that to lure away Google market share, and as it stands now, that might be too tall a task. Ask.com currently handles just 4.8% of U.S. search queries, compared with Google’s 63% share, according to comScore.
