Ask.com, currently languishing in fourth place in the search engine rankings behind Google, Yahoo, and Live Search, has revamped its look, its results, and its speed, and I have to say it’s very impressive.

The new results page shows not just web results, but more structured content that is preset by Ask to come up when a user types in a search. If you search for an actor like Bill Maher, for instance, tv listings will show up, along with images, videos, news results, and regular web matches. On the right side of the screen is a list of related searches, whereas Google puts these at the bottom to make more space for ads.

Ask is also claiming they are now 30% faster than they were before. And it does seem like a very fast search engine.

Ask got into the business by being Ask Jeeves, a question-and-answer engine. Now they offer a search that pulls results only from question-and-answer sites like Yahoo Answers and Wiki Answers.  Click on the “lots of answers” above the search bar on the home page, enter a topic, and Ask will send you a list of relevant question and answer articles from across the web.

It’s worth taking a look at, for sure. You have to hand it to Ask: they keep on offering compelling search ideas in spite of stagnant growth.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 12:05 amand is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.