www.ask.com

hinterfragtvon Michael Domes

Informationsvermittlung Juan Gorraiz 17.01.2007

Internet - Suchmaschinen

Marktanteile - Suchmaschinen

Marktanteile - Suchmaschinen

• Google's lead indeed looks daunting. It has by far the most mass, with an American market share of 43% as of April, which reaches 50% counting AOL, an internet property that uses Google's search technology.

• This compares with 28% for Yahoo!; • 13% for MSN, which belongs to Microsoft; • 6% for Ask, which is owned by IAC/Interactive Corp, a

conglomerate of about 60 online media brands. (Googles market share grew by 17% in the four quarters to this springYahoo! and MSN both lost share. Only Ask has more velocity—its share grew by 35%—but then again it has little mass.)

Überblick Portale von IAC Search

• Ask.com • AskforKids.com • Bloglines.com • Evite.com • Excite.com • FunWebProducts.com • iWon.com • MyWay.com

Suchalgorithmus von Ask

• Ask has come up with ExpertRank, an algorithm that also ranks web pages by incoming links, but is different from Google's PageRank - it first groups, or “clusters”, pages and links by theme. So instead of using a web page's overall popularity to calculate its ranking, it finds the pages that are most popular among experts on a particular subject, a method that often returns better results than Google's. Ask also uses these thematic clusters to suggest the best ways to narrow or expand a search, a feature called “zoom” that is very popular.

Ask - Operatoren

• Default Operation: The default setting is an AND operation.

• Boolean Searching: Limited Boolean searching is available. Ask defaults to an AND between search terms and supports the use of - for NOT. Either OR or ORR can be used for an OR operation.Unfortunately, no nesting is available, so term1 term2 OR term3 is processed as (term1 AND term2) OR term3. Try the advanced search, but it is still difficult to do a term1 AND (term2 OR term3) search.

• Proximity Searching: Phrase searching is available by using "double quotes" around a phrase.

Suche - EinschränkungenLimits: Ask has limits for language, domain, geographic region, and date. All are available from their advanced search page.

• The geographic regions include continents and subcontinents: Africa, Central America, Europe, India or Asia, Middle East, North America, Oceania, South America, and Southeast Asia. Dates can be specified or chosen from the following drop-down options: Last week, 2 weeks, month, 3 months, 6 months, year, or 2 years.

• For language limits, used the advanced search or add the command lang: followed by a two letter code for the language. For example: mondialement lang:fr adds the French limit to a search on 'mondialement.'

• Danish lang:da*Dutch lang:nl*Englishlang:en*French lang:fr*German lang:de*Italian lang:itNorwegian lang:noPortuguese lang:pt*Spanish lang:esSwedishlang:sv

Suche nach Feldern• Field Searching:

The following field searches were introduced in Nov. 2002. It appears that only one at a time can be used, and most cannot be combined with other search terms. So, intitle: and site: can be combined, but intitle: and inurl: cannot. These are also available on their advanced search page.

• FieldExplanation intitle:Finds pages that have the term(s) in the HTML title element. Can be combined with a phrase search. intitle:"search engines". inurl:Finds pages that have the term(s) somewhere in the URL (host name, path, or filename). If one inurl: is used, all search terms are searched within the title element. Can be combined with a phrase search. inurl:searchenginewatch.site:Finds pages from the designated Web site. This is really a domain limit.

• last:Finds pages from one of the specified periods: week, 2weeks, month, 6months, year, 2year. last:2weeksafterdate:Finds pages with a page stamp date later the query in yyyymmdd format.  afterdate:20051022beforedate:Finds pages with a page stamp date before the query in yyyymmdd format. 

Zoom - Suche

• Zoom Related Search• Narrow or broaden your search with possible alternative

search terms which appear on the right hand side of the Ask results page.

• Narrow Your Search: helps you to drill down into topics that are specifically related to your search

• Expand Your Search: allows you to explore topics that are conceptually related to your search

• Related Names: presents a list of names that are conceptually tied to topic options within the "Narrow Your Search" and "Expand Your Search" lists

Bilder - Suche

• Image Search

• Find celebrity images, pictures of your next vacation destination, or the home you plan to buy with a quick image search. Simply enter the key words and get great image results in one click.

Sample Searches • Lindsay Lohan pictures • Pictures of San Francisco • Images of Apache helicopters

Wörterbuch

• Dictionary Search

Need to know the definition or pronunciation of a word, origin of a word or just a new word altogether? Quickly search the online dictionaries, encyclopedias and thesauri for the information you need.

Film - Suche

• Movie Search

Quick access to the latest information for upcoming and recent film releases. Just enter the name of the movie you are looking for.

Blog - Suche

Blogs & Feeds

• Blogs and Feeds: Search the blogosphere using the unique algorithm that combines Ask.com search technology and Bloglines subscription data.

Who is Who

Famous People Search

• Get the latest news and pictures about your favorite celebrities or historical figures using the Famous People Search tool.

Sample searches • Elvis • Muhammad Ali • Abraham Lincoln

Neueste Nachrichten

• News Search• Quickly find all the breaking news – local

and international – with the News Search tool.

Sample Searches • Iraq news • World Cup • George Bush News

Adressen - Suche

• White Pages Search

• Quickly find phone numbers and addresses for people, businesses, government offices, doctors, and schools in the U.S.

Sample Searches • address of John Smith in New York • phone number of William Jones Chicago • phone listings for Paul Chew San Francisco

Die populärsten Suchanfragen

• Ask.com IQ: Popular Searches

• The most popular searches on Ask.com are listed here so you can see what others search for on Ask.com.

Seitenvorschau

• Binoculars Site Preview

• Get to what you're searching for faster! Just point your mouse on the Binoculars icon and a preview of the site will appear, saving you time and the hassle of clicking through search results to get what you want.

Seitenvorschau

Ask: Stärken - Schwächen

• Strengths:  * Identifying metasites  * Refine feature to focus on Web communities

• Weaknesses:  * Smaller database  * No free URL submission 

Ask - Aussichten

• Chris Sherman of SearchEngineWatch thinks that Ask is as good as Google for general web search—but better than Google for finding online maps and images. Ask, he thinks, is therefore starting to resemble Apple in the computer industry, which has a small but dedicated following of fans who consider the Macintosh operating system superior to the dominant Windows system by Microsoft.