Ask Innovates Search UI

Briefly, I've been playing with Ask's experimental new search interface currently called 'AskX'. Read/Write Web has plenty of information (though the interface has changed a little since that post was published). Innovation in the search interface is something I'm really interested in. Microsoft, with its Live branded image search has already been exploring this area and Ask appears to take things to the next level.

There are two fundamental areas of innovation in search - the back end, which Powerset is disrupting with its NLP technology, and the UI which companies like Ask are disrupting. The search giant Google, on the other hand, isn't innovating in either of these spaces, opting rather for a new application a week path.

Comments

[Kyle]

Actually, Google testing some interesting ideas off and away from their flagship search product. If you go to the following URL:

www.searchmash.com

You can see that Google is testing some new interface ideas in the area of search(love the pagination and the ability to play videos inline).

Personally, I don't much care for the new Ask search results screen. I'd rather have the search box across the top, the results flush left, and I like the way Google handles the right rail on SearchMash better than Ask.

Just my 2 cents.

[Matthew Hurst]

Kyle - you are quite right. I overlooked searchmash in my keyboard stampede to put this post up. Searchmash offers many of the same data as AskX. However, I much prefer the Ask interface (searchmash currently looks very rough around the edges).

[Dan G]

Google may not be innovating on the surface, but ime it still gives the best search results (both web and blog), and that's why I use them!

[Zombo]

There's one more.

AOL and their "FullView" feature is in this space as well.

Came across it in this Search Engine Journal post at the beginning of the year...the author's enthusiasm made me want to check it out ( normall not an AOL fan ).

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=4194

Check out the Spiderman3 results ( pretty frickin sweet ).

http://search.aol.com/aolcom/search?query=Spiderman%203&invocationType=smartbox.enter

It's now in the top 3 engines I use. I hit it to check stocks, news stories ( like the lady astronaut ).

The thing I like ( as with Ask X ) is that it saves time sifting through 30 pages of links or 3 tabs to find something related to what I am looking for.

And for what it's worth the Searchmash takes too long to load the side tabs.

My $.04 cents :)

Z

[daniel read]

Im glad you guys are trying out AskX and finding some of the features and functionality we crafted. If you have more feedback, ping me - I would be interested to share ideas with the ask design team.