The loyal butler is gone.
After spending the last decade building its brand around a cartoon character named Jeeves, Ask.com wants everyone to forget the dainty butler and remember its long-overlooked Internet search engine as the next best thing to Google.
The new Ask.com features a slick, do-it-yourself toolbox that helps users refine more types of searches with the first click of their computer mouse for maps, images, dictionaries, weather, local info or documents stored on their computers.
To make its point, Ask.com is jettisoning Jeeves as its corporate mascot and unveiling a retooled Web site that is designed to make it easier to find and use its search technology.
Users can select from up to 20 different types of specialized search tools Ask.com has developed. Later this year, Ask will encourage outside developers to build tools to perform more specialized searches, the company said.
More popular rival search sites from Google, Yahoo or MSN require multiple clicks to reach such specialized information.
Other engines just do 10 blue links and ads around them. We have really gone a lot further, Jim Lanzone, general manager of Ask.com, said in an interview. “Users are going to experience a search engine that does more for them faster than any other search engine they use.”
The makeover, which will be supported by an advertising blitz beginning in mid-March, marks the 10-year-old company’s latest attempt to be taken more seriously as it tries to catch up with the Internet’s top four search engines – Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and Time Warner Inc.’s America Online.
AskJeeves, the fourth most popular U.S. Internet search site, started out in 1996 by promising concrete answers to questions posed by Web users. Jeeves, the butler character, was meant to symbolize this theoretically better form of service.
A novelty for many Web users at first, AskJeeves struggled to attract a regular following. Having computers answer questions proved harder than many users first hoped.
It was a place that over-promised and under-delivered during the dot-com days, Lanzone said. To the majority of consumers AskJeeves is still a place for questions and answers.
Google arrived in 1998 with a page-ranking system based on the idea that credible answers typically come from sites that rank highest in terms of links from other sites. AskJeeves and other search sites have struggled to stand out ever since.
Ask.com also is trying to live up to the high expectations of media tycoon Barry Diller, whose e-commerce conglomerate InterActiveCorp bought the Oakland, Calif.-based company for $2.3 billion last summer.
Barry Diller acquired AskJeeves last year and is working to make the search site the centerpiece of his IAC/InterActiveCorp Internet conglomerate of sites. Ask’s rebranding follows years of improvements to the underlying search algorithms that have drawn praise from search experts but have not been recognized by many Web users.
Diller, InterActiveCorp’s chief executive and controlling shareholder, decided to dump Jeeves within a few weeks of completing the acquisition, but Ask.com is just now getting around to parting with its loyal servant.
Ousting Jeeves represents a bit of a risk because his genteel figure has been so synonymous with Ask.com, thanks to past marketing efforts that included the butler’s appearance in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
"If some people are upset about the butler going away, so be it," said Steve Berkowitz, Ask.com’s chief executive. "As more people come to our site and are satisfied with the results they get, they are going to forget the butler."
Among the new features, are the latest technology for mapping that allows the user not only to search for a map based on an address or postal code but build an itinerary with up to 10 different locations. Users also can rapidly pinpoint locations without knowing an exact address to create driving or walking directions based on overhead aerial maps.
Lanzone said the site should encourage loyal Jeeves fans to stay longer while attracting new users, building on momentum the site has enjoyed since August, when it cut back advertising clutter, making it less outwardly commercial than rivals.
The company now believes its search tools are as good, if not better, than Google’s – a message that Berkowitz believes would be difficult to convey as long as Jeeves stuck around.
This is really the first time in our history that we have been able to stand up and shout about what we are doing so we can get the attention we deserve, Berkowitz said.
To showcase its search technology, Ask.com is displaying fewer ads and reserving the right side of its home page for a tile-like directory that can be clicked on for quicker access to its various channels and tools, including shopping, mapping, weather, and currency conversion.
It is like we have put everything we have on speed dial, said Lanzone.
Some of Ask.com’s earlier improvements helped it increase its share of the U.S. search engine market share from 5.3 percent at the end of 2004 to 6.3 percent in December, according to comScore Media Metrix, a research firm.
That is a far faster increase than Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s MSN or Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, albeit off a smaller base.
Berkowitz believes Ask.com’s latest changes will help boost its market share above 10 percent to surpass AOL before setting its sights on MSN and Yahoo. While catching Google probably is not realistic, Berkowitz and Lanzone hope people begin to realize Ask.com is the only other large Web site besides Google primarily focused on search.
Although Yahoo, MSN and AOL all have been emphasizing search recently, their sites continue to offer a wide array of entertainment, information and other services aimed at keeping visitors around as long as possible.
"We are starting to see some genuine differentiation between the major players," said analyst Chris Sherman, president of Searchwise, the author of several books on the subject, who is based in Boulder, Colorado.
The big challenge that Ask and Yahoo and others have is that many people are so habitually using Google to search that even if Ask has something better it may not matter, he said.
People have been conditioned to think that only one brand equals search, Lanzone said. It is time that they realize that Ask is a serious alternative to Google.