Any one seen the sad anti Google advert?

[azoundria]

One thing I have heard about Google - many of it's employees come in after-hours to help improve the engine for particular keywords which aren't displaying the best results. Google is definitely passionate about providing helpful results - which is exactly what users want.

The basic idea of Ask is attractive - just type your question, any question, and it will bring up results to help you find the answer. But are they helpful results? Sure, you can easily make good results for common queries (such as 'why is the sky blue?') but does the search engine adapt to less-common queries?

I would have to say my favourite thing about Google is how it keeps it simple - it's the same interface it always was. Ask has dropped Jeeves (the top question for 'what' is 'what happened to Jeeves?'), changed their layout around - changed their entire philosophy around practically!

The big question is 'why switch?'. Ask is trying to answer it by fear - but who is better to trust with my information than Google? Ask is trying to answer it by upgrade - but I like the interface simple. Ask is trying to answer it by marketing - but most of the world already knows about them. Ask needs to answer it by result!

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by azoundria

One thing I have heard about Google - many of it's employees come in after-hours to help improve the engine for particular keywords which aren't displaying the best results. Google is definitely passionate about providing helpful results - which is exactly what users want.

Hi Azoundria. If google really was "passionate about providing helpful results", there wouldn't be such a thing as their satan spawned supplemental index where pages are penalized then "sequestered" and never seen by the public except for rare occasions (simply because not enough site owners have the need to link to them [low PR]); nor would they be deleting countless white-hat, unique & relevant webpages and even entire websites from their index for no reason (flawed algos). Y, MSN, etc., is much more passionate about "providing helpful results" because they do NOT delete white-hat pages and sites from their index anywhere even close to the amount google does, nor do they have a supp index.

When google stops harming the innocent at such alarming numbers, then we can call them "passionate about providing helpful results".

The only thing I can think of they do after hours, is either use crack (which would explain the basis of PR, supp index, erroneous deletions, etc.), or further tweak the algos to give even a wider edge of special benefits and special treatment, to the likes of sites like Ebay, Amazon, Bizrate, Pricegrabber, and similar.

You're a young guy, so apparently you're unaware of these things.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by chrisJumbo

They should focus on what makes them better and different.

cd :O)

As in this: YouTube - Ask.com 'Binoculars' TV advert=

Now that's effective advertising; I'm now interested in using Ask again.

MJ

[Martinscholes]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

As in this: YouTube - Ask.com 'Binoculars' TV advert=

Now that's effective advertising; I'm now interested in using Ask again.

MJ

And how has Ask proved itself to be the hot hip and guaranteed Number 1 in the field of openness and counter culture (sic) searching?

It has had the comment section disabled for the above advert video. Oh, yeah. Real heavy duty alternative, that...

[mjtaylor]

Um, I wasn't speaking to the hip factor - just to the concept that I could get a snapshot view of a page in the SERPs before clicking through - that feature is attractive enough to me to have been an effective advertising hook.

So, indeed, I checked out Ask and it returned my sites even better than Google (where I have no complaints). So while I have nothing to say about its appeal to counter culture, it is clearly an even more relevant SE!

J/K, MJ

[Peter (IMC)]

Ask doesn't even have special sites for other countries...

[Martinscholes]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Ask doesn't even have special sites for other countries...

It does. Sort of. All 7 of them, according to their website. Whoopie-do.

This is against over 100 for Google.

If only Ask had spent the money it wasted on the fake underground campaign on improving its search engine service! Nah! Couldn't do that! There'd be no fun in that!

[mjtaylor]

Here's a great commercial for Ask ...

[braver55b]

Its called the free market, I don't get it. instead of trying to improve their product, they instead choose to stoop this low.