Ask Jeeves Introduces Zoom and Web Answers

Ask Jeeves Investor Relations: "Ask Jeeves Introduces Zoom and Web Answers"

I've been playing around with both of these for about an hour this afternoon trying to get a feel for how and if these work.

Zoom (subtitled Concept Navigation) "offers suggestions to narrow and refine your search ("zooming in"), or expand your search ("zooming out") to explore new ideas." The Zoom suggestions should appear on the right hand side of your results page. I found that if you carry out a fairly precise search such as my 'gin vodka sales UK' test search, nothing appears in the Zoom section. A search on 'climate change', though, suggests that I might like to narrow my search to global warming, global warming causes, global warming impact etc. Alternatively, it suggests I could expand my search using strategies such as Kyoto Protocol, Ice Age theory.

The new Web Answers claims to extend "Ask Jeeves' direct-answering abilities by mining unstructured data in real time." This part of Ask Jeeves is apparently triggered by questions, phrases or keywords for example "how....". "what.....". I tried what I thought was a straightforward question - how fast can a hippopotamus swim?

It did not help that the top five results were sponsored web results for swimwear and swimsuits at M&S (Marks and Spencers - a UK based retailer). 10 minutes later and when I had stopped laughing I found that none of the "real" links gave me an answer and the Zoom option to narrow my search suggested two queries: how many bones does a hippopotamus have and how fast can a hippopotamus run. Wikipedia comes up with a possible and credible answer straight away.

"Why is the grass green", a test search suggested to me by Neil Infield, did not do much better until I had worked through two levels of the Zoom searches. The first results were offering me lawn care services, grass seed and astro turf.

In conclusion, I found Zoom to be a useful additional tool. If it does not appear next to your results list then that suggests you are already running quite a precise search. As for Web Answers - pass me that hippo sized swimsuit, I've obviously had too many gin and vodka cocktails:-)