Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves) is spending a fortune on newspaper ads at the moment, because it wants you to use it instead of Google. It’s nicer than before and when the “binoculars” (a mouseover that displays a site preview) work, the whole experience is very clever. The search results seem pretty good, too.
I’m sticking with Google, though: Ask.com gives up far too much of the results page to adverts, so while the paid links on Google take up about 1/8th of the screen, Ask.com’s text ads take up roughly twice that amount. If Ask also decides to put up product search results, the amount of usable space falls further (try searching for “mac” and you’ll see what I mean).
A few extra lines of ads probably doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you use search engines throughout your working day that’s an awful lot of extra scrolling and clicking.
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0 responses to “The reborn Ask.com: good, not great”
Interestingly, a search for ‘mac’ on Google returns http://www.apple.com as the top result while Ask returns http://www.maccosmetics.com. That has profound ramifications, I’m sure, though I have no idea what they are.
Apple may have to solve that problem by breaking into the cosmetics industry.
That is interesting, actually. The Google result is best for techies, but the Ask.com result is more real-world: Mac is a big, big name in slap.
While a search for mac on the new live.com beta returns Midlands Arts Centre as the top result
I’ve been waiting for Live to load for about 15 minutes.
Ooh, now it’s just crashed firefox.
*sighs*
I’m quite impressed with it (live). Not so much the search but the customisable home page. It’s much better looking than Google’s. It’s been working fine for me in Firefox, too.
Yeah, the front page is OK. I don’t like that kind of stuff – a search box does me fine – but it’s quite an elegant way of approaching it.
Google’s about to launch a calendar. I’m so excited I can barely speak.