Try it, go to askjeeves.com, notice how it redirects you to ask.com and then shows you the old Jeeves character.

Is Jeeves back?

Don’t you remember? Ask.com retired Jeeves back in February of 2006. Now, two and half years later, they are bringing Jeeves back? Is it possible?

Last signs of Jeeves showed he was in the adult entertainment business (joking), possibly because Ask.com’s search technology has been looking a bit shaky, to say the least.

All in all, it does indeed seem like Ask.com is going back to 1996 and maybe this just helps us prove it?

I will email Ask.com’s PR team for a comment on this finding and update this post when/if I get an answer.

Hat tip to @leonardholmes for spotting this.

Postscript: An Ask.com spokesperson returned my request and told me the following:

For users who search for Jeeves, or type in the ‘askjeeves.com’ URL, we’re giving them an ‘easter egg’ that shows Jeeves on their homepage. The image disappears once the user exits their browser. It’s a nice surprise for those users who still look for him, and we’ve gotten positive feedback from our users who have experienced it.

Related Topics: Ask: General | Ask: Promotions

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz