Entered CNET Catalog: 04/11/2005
SKU: SERVASKJEEVES
Manufacturer: Ask Jeeves, Inc.
Product summary
The good: Includes Smart Search boxes with at-a-glance info; MyJeeves portal saves and organizes your search history and selected results; Binoculars feature gives you a sneak preview of a Web site before you click; offers downloadable toolbar with desktop search.
The bad: Lacks video or audio searches; delivers so-so local search results.
The bottom line: While it's weak on multimedia and local searches, Ask Jeeves's powerful search history, organizational tools, and one-of-a-kind site preview make it a compelling choice for students.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 05/10/2005
Ask Jeeves has always had a pretty spare interface, with its signature butler asking ever so politely, "What can I help you find today?" Recently, however, the site has moved away from its antiquated Ask button, replacing it with a more contemporary Search button instead. There's also a series of links above the search box for Web, Pictures, News, Local, and Products searches. A row of highlighted icons along the bottom of the screen offers access to special features such as MyJeeves, which saves favorite searches; Downloads, which includes the Ask Jeeves search toolbar; and the forthcoming Ask Jeeves desktop search tool.
Ask Jeeves's main search results put your searches into context. For many of our searches, a Smart Search box appeared above our results, with images, a brief explanatory blurb, and links to news items, secondary images, Wikipedia entries, shopping sites, local weather, and airport info. Even better, mouse over the little binocular icons next to several of the results, and you'll see a thumbnail-size preview of the Web site. Cached pages are also available, perfect for viewing old versions of frequently updated Web sites. You can also save your favorite search results in the MyJeeves portal, where you can sort and organize your top results and search history. Image searches provide thumbnails but no information on file size or dimensions. At present, Ask Jeeves lacks video and music searches.
Unfortunately, we found local searches on Ask Jeeves to be hit-and-miss. On the one hand, you can enter and save locations, such as work and home, and recall them for future searches. However, when you call up a saved location, Ask Jeeves remembers only the city and the state, not your address, meaning that the location-search results you save won't show precise distances. Luckily, the site grabs your street address when calculating driving distances. Also on the plus side are Ask Jeeves's mapping features, with numbered icons for each search result and links to CitySearch reviews for restaurants, bars, and other local venues. We also like Ask Jeeves's rich news searches, which feature plenty of sources and news photos, as well as its movie searches, which include posters, ratings, review info from RottenTomatoes.com, and a local showtimes search. The Firefox, blocks pop-ups and lets you access your MyJeeves portal. Ask Jeeves's help section doesn't provide detailed search examples, but it includes a basic FAQ for those new to the site.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4out of 4 user reviews
The Q&A beta is an interesting feature
Pros: The Q&A feature is pretty neat
The themes blend pretty well
Cons: Overall search quality cant match up to industry leaders
Not as quick in delivering results, as compared to google
out of 4 user reviews
Better before the revamp...
Pros: Nice interface.
Cons: Since they've tried catching up to Google in market share, their search technology sucks.
out of 4 user reviews
Very easy to use.
Pros: Finds just about everything.
Cons: Dosen't allways find everything.
I like the fact that you can seach by asking a question.
Wether you are new to the Internet or a Seasoned Professional both will find Ask Jeeves very easy to use.
out of 4 user reviews
Not Impressed
Pros: Funny Name!
Cons: Didn't Work Well For Me
I have no clue what that means. Every link, every time. Perhaps it's alien script.
It's not a name I think of when I want to search for something. Perhaps if it was simply ASK.COM it would be more appealing and more likely to be remembered.
