'Largest Q&A Database on the Web'
Ask.com President Doug Leeds said that, "with 87 million monthly users and more than a decade of Q&A experience, Ask.com is uniquely positioned to answer the long tail of questions that are impossible for search engines alone to address."
The new answer service was formerly an invitation-only beta. The company said "subjective and complex questions" that stump traditional search engines are directed to the Ask user community, utilizing Q&A matching technology which routes questions to appropriate possible answerers, based on interests and expertise. Each question will be returned with any possible answers from web content as well as Ask.com member responses.
The newest version of Ask.com includes proprietary semantic search technologies that display the most relevant answers at the top of the page, so no click-through is required to read a short answer. The search engine also includes what Ask.com described as the "largest Q&A database on the web," with more than 500 million questions and answers indexed, and the ability to mine hundreds of thousands of sources for specific question-and-answer pairs.
Formerly AskJeeves.com
There is also a revamped user interface, which features highlights of the most popular questions, as well as auto-suggestion of questions when users start typing into the search field.
The company is reverting to its origins as AskJeeves.com, in which conversational questions were the promoted form of inquiry. But that incarnation, whose symbol was a butler ready to answer your question, had a hit-or-miss ability to actually understand a question and deliver a useful answer. The butler and the asking mode were phased out for an emphasis on traditional search, but now the site's mode of inquiry has come full circle.
Ask.com characterizes its brand as the number-one choice for questions and answers online. "People never stopped coming to us with their questions," Leeds told The New York Times. "We started out that way, and that's what people remember."
Asking rather than searching may evolve into what search engines become. In February, Google purchased Aardvark, which says it will find in a few minutes "the perfect person to answer" a user's question. Facebook is reportedly testing a Q&A service between friends, and Yahoo, LinkedIn, a startup named Quora, and Answers.com, among others, are also exploring the value of questions.
