Answers at Ask.com

This is a shameless plug made in favor of the shareholders (i.e. me) and internet denizens like yourselves.

We launched a completely revamped site today. Most noticeable, is the removal of the left hand navigation frame that contained the "Narrow Your Search and " Related Search" features. Frame design as a whole was streamlined to provide less clutter on the screen and more information relating to a query. In short, we redesigned to focus on providing answers, so people can avoid the constant clicking of a link, then clicking back to return to an initial search result page.

The site now presents "blended results", which mean that each blue link resulting from a search can contain content matches from various sources.

Various agencies reporting on the release liken it to a harkening waaaaay back in the 90s, when it was askjeeves.com and people actually provided answers/results for queries. I suppose it is in a way, but now the responses are fed by various external data sources and our own proprietary search algorithms.

Are we now considered a "core" search engine? That will be left up to the users. We're certainly taking actions on the traffic data, to understand what people are looking for, and how they look for it.

We've also acquired Lexico, the parent of dictionary.com, thesarus.com. and reference.com, so expect to see more integration in the future. These services fall directly in line with the new direction of Ask.com: quickly providing answers to users asking questions.

 

Check the new site out. Send feedback, although I can't guarantee you'll get a response you will feel better after getting it off your chest.