Ask.com: Smart PR & Smart Feeds
This past Wednesday morning when I came into work, I had an email pop out at me in my inbox. The subject line read, ‘Hello from Gary Price’. After my holy smokes moment, I proceeded to open it, and read a very nice introduction to a fellow Librarian whose career I’ve been following since at least 1996. Search Engine Watch? ResourceShelf? Docuticker? Yes, indeed, that Gary Price.
I remember reading when Gary left SEW to go to the new Ask.com, a time when the Jeeves butler was in the process of getting the proverbial boot, and thinking: “now there’s a company who gets it. Many Librarians, myself included, will give Ask a second look on Gary’s recommendation alone. Let’s hope they don’t waste it with the same old products”.
Now given what the market share is, and like everyone else, there’s no way I’ll be taking my eyes off Google. But I remember when the search market was a multi-horse race, and I remember liking that each engine indexed content in a different way. So this week, approximately one year since Gary’s arrival, I’m going to be re-introduced Ask.com. Gary will be giving me a personal tour, and soliciting feedback this Friday… I will report back, and post a follow-up next week.
The one notable that I did pick up from Gary’s first email, and I’ll pass along here today, is the integration of RSS feeds into the search results. Coined smart feeds, when you conduct a search that is overwhelmingly consistent with an authoritative feed-enabled resource, it will show the most recent content items for that feed. You can test it with my name, a search for boing boing, or a very helpful ‘content-in-context’ approach for product recalls. It doesn’t work on every feed, and there is a human selection process involved (image that?), but it is a pretty nice integration.
So, open forum Slawyers: Any comments or questions you want passed along?
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