Ask.com has just undergone a major overhaul, with the search engine supposedly being rebuilt from the ground up. Unfortunately, at least in my opinion, it’s still as rubbish as it was before.

I remember Ask.com when it was Ask Jeeves. I didn’t like it then and I still don’t like it now. This is mainly due to the fact that Google offers me everything I need from a search engine. But even if Google didn’t exist, I still wouldn’t like Ask.com as there’s just something inherently messy about it all.

The changes are mostly intended to alter Ask.com from a basic search engine in to a more Web 2.0-type environment. Therefore, rather than just delivering results from the Web, a search query will yield answers from more structured sources.

There will also be results obtained from sites such as Yahoo Answers and WikiAnswers, which seems to indicate a return to the kind of question and answer results that Ask Jeeves was originally built upon.

According to The New York Times, results are also claimed to be more accurate and returned about 30% faster than was possible with the previous model. While the changes are nice, it still leaves Ask trailing way behind Google, currently the search market’s top dog.

The main reason for this is the messiness that seems inherent with Ask. While Google is nicely laid out and easy to follow, type a query in to Ask and you’ll be bombarded on all sides with other possible avenues to explore. I’m sure some people will like this approach, especially those not au fait with search engines and keywords.

But, for me, a search engine should just do what it says on the tin, or at least what I ask it to do with the tin. That is to give me results in order of relevancy pertaining to my query. Ask tries to go beyond that and guess what I’m thinking, which is just annoying.

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Entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 4:20 pm under Google, Internet, Opinion, Web2.0.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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