Ask Again

The search engine Ask.com, which once was Ask Jeeves, the natural language search engine, is trying out yet another skin. Ask X, their “double-secret sandbox for testing Ask experiences of the future” can be found at http://www.ask.com/?ax=5, proudly sporting the reflected logo expected now of Web 2.0 apps. But there’s also new stuff inside. A three panel interface offers you “search control” on the left, search results in the centre, and in the right panel a “preview of other types of search results, including video, news, images, blogs, shopping, encyclopedia and more.”

My acid test is a search for “slaw.” Ask X only gave us number 10 slot, and failed to find any blog results from Slaw to show in its right panel. Hmph. See what you think about it, though.