Ask & AOL

Industry-Leading Relevance and Image-Specific Zoom Related Search Provide Superior Image Search Experience

Ask Jeeves Inc. has a new image search engine and it is ready for its close-up, the Oakland, California, company announced recently.

The new tool includes Ask Jeeves's internally created index of Web images, improvements to its image search ranking algorithms and Zoom-related suggestions for image searching. Zoom is Ask Jeeves's proprietary concept for clustering results into topics to help user find what they want. Collectively, these improvements deliver a superior image search experience, helping people find the pictures they are looking for faster.

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Ask Jeeves Inc. has relocated its South Bay operations into a new, larger space in Campbell, California.

Ask Jeeves said it has moved an office from Los Gatos to a new 16,000-square-foot Campbell office space at 655 Technology Parkway. It said the new space will accommodate new hires as well as current employees being relocated from the former offices. The company has also expanded its corporate headquarters in Oakland, California.

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America Online quietly launched a new video-on-demand search service recently, opening the doors for millions of Internet users to view music videos, news segments and other content from parent company Time Warner, whose mountain of media holdings gives AOL an advantage over rivals Google and Yahoo. (more…)

America Online Inc. will inherit Engadget, Autoblog and other popular Web journals as part of a $25 million deal announced recently that expands AOL's presence in the blogging community and the company's potential to attract advertising dollars.

Although Santa Monica, Calif.-based Weblogs will operate with full editorial control and independence as a wholly owned subsidiary, AOL will integrate the blogs into its AOL.com portal by linking to the best entries. Visitors to AOL's Moviefone, for instance, might see referrals to Weblogs' Cinematical blog on films.

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Updated its search features bring it on par with rivals-but with several added twists.
America Online announced several new features for AOL Search in a bid to help create a more customizable and comprehensive search experience. The new features are the result of extensive consumer testing on AOL's part and are available at: http://search.aol.com/.

While AOL Search is still powered by Google, they have long worked on ways to create a unique experience for searchers. From highly specific vertical searches like media search and local search to user-friendly search features like Snapshot Answers and Smartbox Suggestions, AOL has managed to create one of the best search experiences for a site lacking an original algorithm.

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America Online announced plans to add search options to its podcast offering by this fall.
AOL has become the latest Internet player to tap into the podcast craze, launching a podcast search service. The firm has secured a deal with search engine technology firm Podscope to add a podcast search capability to the AOL search engine.

A podcast "Search and Discovery" feature will be added via a new version of Winamp Media Player, while another search option will become available as a result of a new deal with TVEyes, AOL said. The new features are likely to become available this fall, according to the company.

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After fighting a rearguard battle for much of the past two years, America Online is going on the offensive with a new plan to retain customers and expand its business on the Web--a strategy it has tried before with little success.

AOL's CEO Jonathan Miller will present a turnaround plan for the online giant to the Time Warner board of directors. AOL declined to make Miller available for an interview for this article, but a source familiar with AOL's plans said Miller will offer new cost-cutting measures and sketch out a blueprint aimed at tapping the resurgent online advertising market.

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Ask Jeeves plans to reduce the number of paid links on a search results page from about ten to two or three. The bottom line here is that now there will be fewer paid links on results pages. This will increase the amount of Direct Advertising improving the Improving the search function in consumer categories such as concert tickets.

This news is a win-win for both Ask Jeeves and web searchers. One of the most frequent complaints from potential Ask Jeeves users is that the number of paid ads on results pages make web results page busy and downright difficult to navigate and use. Reducing the number of ads on a results page will, if marketed correctly will get more people to look at what Ask Jeeves has been up to since things began to improve past five years ago. At the same time, fewer ads will make the visible ads more noticeable to the searcher.

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