When is the "Jeeves & Teoma" going to be taken out of the title?

[everett sizemor]

Just asking...

Hey it's a lousy first post, but you gotta start somewhere.

Seriously though, our clients are seeing the commercials and are starting to bug us about their rankings on Ask. Can we get a discussion going about how they rank sites?

Are they still taking data from someone else's algo, or do they have their own "proprietary" ranking system? I checked Bruce Clay's chart, but it doesn't seem to be up to date.

Is their ranking mostly link-based like Google, or Content, Title based like MSN, or somewhere in-between like Yahoo? Well actually I sometimes think yahoo's algo is based on a few monkeys in a room with a pair of dice as a transvestite midget with Downs Syndrome takes notes.

Anyhoo... Nice to meet you.

[Seekz]

The Ask engine is based on the Teoma engine they acquired, so they do use their own index and ranking algorithms. It would be good to get more information on how they rank sites.

[everett sizemor]

Does anyone have input on Ask-specific SEO?

Thanks for the info Seekz.

[Elisabeth]

"Ask" and ye shall receive

The title change is done - and should have been long ago.

As for your questions on the technology, I think we can get some good discussion going here-

but as a general comment, it's nice to see that the commercials and new branding are at least resonating with people.

[Robert_Charlton]

Originally Posted by everett sizemor

Is their ranking mostly link-based like Google, or Content, Title based like MSN, or somewhere in-between like Yahoo?

This is how I understand it from way back (and it's a huge oversimplification on a lot of levels). Ask's ranking is also link-based like Google's, but not all sites get to vote. The votes from the universe of sites deemed to be "on-topic" either count more, or are the only votes counted.

There's been talk for a while now that Google also gives weight to topicality of link sources, but if they do it's not nearly as extreme as I've seen in Ask. On some searches, Ask gives excellent results, without the obvious spam I've been noticing in the big three. But the topical links algo, couple with a still limited index size, gives some occasionally very odd results.

Some years back, I had a fluorescent lamp going bad, and decided to try my search for information on all the engines, to see which gave the best results. I noticed that Teoma results were oddly skewed. The search was something like...

how to tell when a fluorescent tube is bad

The Teoma results were all Asian electronics companies. Remembering how Teoma got its reference links... and that when I traveled in Asia everybody used fluorescent lights... I got some understanding of how a focus reference set could distort what came up.

Trying the search now, Google and Yahoo both seem to make sense out of my syntax and to return useful results.

Ask results, though, have numerous problems. They're too literal about the phrase "how to tell," and they still seem to be too strongly influenced by the dominant peer groups. Their current fluorescent-tube peer groups seem to have changed from Asian manufacturers to aquarium owners and users of grow lights ( ), though Matsu****a still pops up at the bottom of page two.

PS: I see we've got a text string filter on the forum bleeping one syllable of the name of the Japanese electronics company I noted above.

[everett sizemor]

I shouldn't have typed "bug us". Our clients never "bug us". They pay our bills. I was just being a little bit fececious for my first post. That aside...


THANK YOU Search Engine Roundtable for getting some action in this thread, thanks Elisabeth for granting semantic wishes, and thank you Robert for your valuable input.

Do you think their focus will remain on the topicality of links in the near future, or might they change to improve the index?

I guess either way, getting links from vertical / topical websites is not a bad thing.

Cheers,

Everett