Wow, the benediction of Walt Mossberg:
Google and Ask each have rolled out new ways of presenting search results. Google’s approach, which it calls “universal search,” is a modest thing, a first step in what it says will be a long effort to break down barriers between different types of information a user may be seeking, such as Web links, images and news.
But Ask’s new system, called “Ask3D,” is a much bolder and better advance in unifying different kinds of results and presenting them in a more effective manner. It shows, once again, that Ask places a higher priority than its competitors do on making search results easy to navigate and use.
ASK is quite impressive in its effort to improve.
It still appears to be imitating the basic layout of Google’s organic SERPs – as have the rest of the big three – but it is adding an extra layer to make the SERPs more relevant and vertical and distinguishable.
The overall results are about as relevant as Yahoo; they recently changes their ALGOs after using the same algos for years.
It will be interesting to see it they can survive and develop without being acquired by the other giants.
it will be interesting to see if it is eventually acquired by Yahoo or MSN or AOL.