Chris Sherman once compared Ask.com to Apple. Ask CEO Jim Lanzone remarked to me that he liked the comparison because it spoke to quality and innovativeness. Indeed, among the top-tier search engines Ask has arguably been the most innovative. In one sense it has to be. Without that effort it might lose hold on the roughly 5 percent search market share it currently has.

But the site has never gotten the notice and usage that Lanzone feels is justified. That may change with the introduction of the new Ask -– “Ask 3D.” The company is touting the release as a “major leap forward” for search. A bold three-panel interface (taken from the experimental Ask X) integrates more multimedia content, including images, videos, music files, as well as more structured text-based content. It also offers a battery of impressive features – new and existing – to bring more context and help to search results:

In general, Ask has done a tremendous job packing the results page full of content, tools and information without making that presentation cluttered or challenging to use. Users will have to discover and learn about all the tools and capabilities on the page, however.

The three panel design

Evolving out of the “Ask X” experimental design and interface that appeared without any fanfare in December, 2006 the new Ask features the same design with myriad improvements and enhancements. The left panel features Ask’s “Zoom Related Search,” which enables users to refine or expand their queries and suggests additional searches related to the query subject. Below is an example for “Tiger Woods.” There are also dynamic search suggestions as users type queries.

The middle panel contains both Ask’s “Smart Answers” — structured content at the top of the page, which is query dependent –- and an improved “Binoculars” website preview feature with larger images.

But the right panel is arguably where the Ask 3D interface truly differentiates itself. This is where additional relevant content is presented. Depending on the query that can be content from blogs, news sites, video, images, RSS feeds, music files (with “in-line” play), dictionary definitions, time, weather conditions and other content. Below is an example of part of the content that appears in the right column for the search “Hillary Clinton.”

You can also perform an image search from the right column. In general, Ask’s image search and refinements are impressive.

Going head-to-head with Google

I performed a variety of searches in an informal test of how the new Ask 3D would perform versus market leader Google. The results were mixed. In several cases there was little difference in the quality, in some cases Google was better and in a few Ask was clearly better. In those cases where Ask was better it was due to the additional visual information and structured content on the page.

Compare, for example, the following search results:

Cheesecake Recipes: Google vs. Ask

Picasso: Google vs. Ask

Cancun: Google vs. Ask

In the above three results, Ask is much stronger. But compare a search for British pop star “Mika”: Google vs. Ask. Here Google gets it right and includes a video in organic results. On Ask only the sponsored results are correct.

New video search

The new Ask integrates video search that allows sorting by length of video and by file type. There’s also a feature analogous to “Binoculars” that Ask calls “rollover pre-roll.” It provides a preview of the intended video without a click.

It will get attention but will it gain market share?

Ask’s Jim Lanzone said he was weary of the “market share” discussion that inevitably comes up. He told me that Ask was trying, as a primary matter, to simply increase the frequency of millions of searchers who use the engine only once a month. Corroborating this, the Piper Jaffray 2006 Online Media Survey found that while only 4 percent of respondents cited Ask.com as their primary search engine, “more than 50 percent of the respondents at least sometimes use Ask.com—more than the group who said the same about AOL search.”

Internal Ask data, as well as the Piper Jaffray findings therefore suggest that Ask could still make gains even it if doesn’t take share from one of its competitors. The fact that the UI and search results are visually differentiated from competitors, as a basic matter, will get attention and could encourage non-users to give Ask a try. In all likelihood, it will also help Ask gain some additional volume from its more “casual” users.

The broader market-share question confronts not only Ask but its larger competitors. Simply getting attention, let alone adoption and usage, is challenging when search engines and search results pages tend to closely resemble one another – and mostly emulate Google.

The idea that “the competition is just a click away” is also something of a misnomer these days. Google’s brand equity and identification with search in the public mind, plus a growing range of products (toolbar, Maps, Gmail, iGoogle and others) directly and indirectly reinforce usage of Google search. Search behaviors are relatively entrenched and people are now generally comfortable and familiar with Google (putting aside some newer questions about privacy). In addition, Google continues to aggressively focus on search, most recently introducing personalization and “Universal Search.”

The latter involves integration of more structured and vertical content into Google.com results. One could argue that while Google has made incremental changes in that direction, Ask has taken a much bolder leap toward similar goals with Ask 3D.

But that bold leap is perhaps more necessary than elective at this stage. You can’t gain users if you can’t get them to “look up” and take notice of your product. The striking visual elements of Ask 3D will likely get many people to take notice. Along those lines Ask has introduced “skins,” which can be used to customize Ask’s homepage. Below is “polka dots.”

In the near term Ask will let users upload their own pictures to truly customize the engine. If, for example, a family picture or a personal favorite image is on your search engine that might motivate you to use it more. And while skins is a small thing, it contributes to the aesthetic and visual differentiation the site offers with its new look and feel. Similarly, Google recently introduced graphical headers (”themes”) for iGoogle.

The bottom line: a good restart

This post couldn’t go into all the many features of the new site so take a look to see if you agree that this is a big step forward for Ask — and one that may nudge some of its competitors to introduce more “content” into search results.

I didn’t do a systematic, side-by-side analysis of how the site performed compared with Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Dogpile or others. I merely compared a number of queries and search results with Google. As indicated, Ask seemed to really stand out on broad or vague queries, building more tools, structure and context around them to help guide users to a satisfactory result.

Ask 3D may perhaps ultimately be most helpful and even compelling to people who are not “power users.” But it offers a set of tools and search capabilities that arguably could best be exploited by sophisticated or heavy search-engine users. There’s something of a paradox in my mind.

Ask has launched a multi-million dollar ad campaign to raise awareness of and support the product. It will likely succeed at building awareness and gaining attention. The question will then become: can it build on this strong relaunch and generate momentum and long-term usage growth?

Questions.

Cost? Nothing specific, but think comparable to what’s out there now.

Mike Arrington points that a small netbook is running the OS now for the demo we saw. Which one? They say Asus EEE PC. Looks like the one I have.

Question on manufacturers. Google will have page saying what’s supported, what need to be upgraded or changed. Want to work with people.

Will there be an app store? “We really care. The web has great applications.” On the web, there are hundreds of millions of applications.

Goal of device for delightful experience to be on the web. But a few use cases where it’s challenging (this in response to can you edit videos on it). “There will be some thing this is not for.” Say lawyers that want to go back and forth with documents (I mean they could do that online, but I think they all still use WordPerfect, so if you have to have that software, good luck).

Support Silverlight? Round and around to no answer.

Hardware support? Initially focused on netbook like devices.

I love an underdog, especially a smart underdog. So I’m definitely rooting for Ask.com, because I think they’ve been an undervalued player in the search game. All the headlines have been focused on the big three and in the meantime, the team back at Ask.com has been quietly building a better search engine. A much better search engine. And from the user’s point of view, one of the main people to thank is Michael Ferguson, Ask’s key user interface person.

Michael and I met a few years ago when we both presented on the same panel at Search Engine Strategies (the name of the city escapes me at the moment). This was back when the butler was safely riding high at the top of the results page. Jeeves seemed blissfully unaware of what his fate might be in a few short months. I was a little apprehensive when I saw Michael’s name on the panel notes, because I had publicly taken Ask Jeeves to task a number of times previously for their unabashed jamming of sponsored ads at the top of the page, driving the top organic listings below the fold. Our first eye tracking study had showed what a dangerous and limited view of monetization this was. You might make the quarter, but you’re blowing off your customers and in the long run, it will kill you. I was picturing an ugly public display of differing viewpoints, degenerating into a full blown SES smackdown.

After the session, when Michael and I grabbed a few moments to chat, I hesitantly touched on this. To my surprise, Michael’s first comment was “You think I don’t know that?” He then launched into a bit of a rant (it was a very gentile rant, Michael is a pretty low-key guy) about how he’d been passionately arguing this internally to anyone who would listen. Well, with IAC’s acquisition of Ask, it seems they’re listening. Michael has the room to do what he wants with the user experience, and monetization has been moved down the priority list in favor of winning back users. See, what did I tell you about Ask being smart?

Anyway, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Michael as a usability guy and now that he has to freedom to work, I knew we’d be seeing some promising things rolling out of the Ask X sandbox. I had a chance to catch up with Michael a week or so ago just to check in. As per normal with these interviews, I’ll be pulling excerpts and adding my analysis for this column and I’ve posted the full transcript on my blog.

The first thing I did was ask about Michael (and Ask’s) approach to user experience:

Michael: A lot of what we do is, to some extent, informed by core search needs but also by our relevant market share, understanding that people have often experienced other engines before they come to us, not necessarily in that session but generally on the web. People have at least done a few searches on Google and Yahoo, so they have some context coming from those search experiences. Often, we’re taking what we’ve learned from best practices from our competitors and on top of that, trying to add a lot of product experience and relevance experiences that are differentiated.

And also, of course, we’re come from this longer history of the company where we’ve had various user experiences over the time we’ve been around. We marketed around natural language in the late 90’s and answered people’s questions at the top of the page, but in the last year and a half or so, we’ve rebranded and really focused on getting the word out to the end users that we are a keyword search engine, an everyday search engine. A lot of the things that we’ve done with users have been to try to implicitly, if not explicitly, inform users that are coming to the site you can use it very much like you can use any other kind of search engine you’ve been on before. Or, if they’re current users and people are coming back to the site, to let them know that the range of experiences and the type of information we bring back to them has greatly expanded. It’s informed by the context of not just a sense of pure search and information retrieval and all the research that’s gone on that in the last 35 or 40 years, but also the dynamics of the experiences that we’ve had before and people’s previous experiences with Ask and then, an acknowledgement that they’ve often searched and looked for information on other sites.

The role of being number 4 (although they’re not that far behind Microsoft) has put Ask in an interesting position. They can take chances the other players can’t with the interface, because they don’t have to worry as much about disrupting a major revenue channel. For Michael, this represents a golden opportunity to take some risks and push the competition in terms of interface innovation. The sandbox of that innovation has been AskX.com, but it looks like Michael and his team are shortening the rollover cycle from the beta bed to the live site, based on good user testing results. During our interview, I did a couple of queries and noticed some recent additions to the main Ask site that had migrated over from AskX. I asked Michael where they were with that.

We’re still in testing with that and it will roll out. We have decided because of a lot of the user experience metrics that we’re getting from the beta test that we’re going to go for it. We have decided to move the full experience over from the Ask X experience. So that will happen sometime this year, we don’t know exactly when. We just, a couple of days ago, really decided we’ve seen enough and we’re pretty excited about that. Google has a really great user experience going, and Yahoo does too, but they have so many different levers that move so much revenue and traffic and experience metrics that I think it’s harder for them to take chances and to move things around and get buy-offs, at a bureaucratic level.

To some extent, we see ourselves as having permission and a responsibility to really innovate on the user experience. It’s definitely a good time for us because we have such great support from IAC and they’re very much invested in us improving the user experience and getting more traffic and frequency and taking market share. They’re ready to very much invest in that. So we don’t need to cram the page with sponsored links. It’s mostly a transitional time when we’re getting people to reconsider the brand and the search engine as a full keyword based, everyday search engine that has lots to offer. There are so many things that, in an informed way, we can make changes on, relative to our competitors.

So, in the short term, what does that mean for the presence of sponsored ads on Ask? Will we be seeing more, less or about the same?

Just to fit along with the logic of Eye Tracking II (Enquiro’s second eye tracking study), those ads are not a delineated part of the user experience for the end user and they’re relevance and their frequency can color the perception of the rest of the page and especially the organic listings below them. Right now, as I said, we’re very much focusing on improved user experience and building frequency and retention of customers, which all the companies are, I’m sure. But we’re really being cautious with the ads and getting them there when they’re appropriate and, as best we can, adjust them over time, so that when they’re there, they’re going to valuable for the user and for the vendor.

I couldn’t help bring up Jeeves’ sordid past when it came to sponsored ads, knowing that Michael would be happy to rise to the occasion and explain his dilemma.

Way before we got acquired by IAC we knew that (we were showing too many ads). We test like other engines would. We test lots of different ad configurations and presentations and things like that but definitely you want to balance that. Way before we got acquired we realized that there’s one thing that’s kind of fun about making the quarter and blowing through it a little bit and then there’s another thing about eroding customers. And definitely there’s a lifetime value that can be gained by giving people what you know is a better user experience over time, so once we did become part of the IAC family, we brought them up to speed with the results that we were finding that were pointing to taking that road and they’ve very much been in support of it. And, of course, their revenue is spread amongst a lot of different pieces of online and offline business so their ability to absorb it is probably more flexible than ours was as a stand alone company.

When I asked whether, as part of the IAC family, we can expect to see the folding in of more of the siloed content on the main site page, Michael indicated that this is path they need to approach cautiously.

Maybe the most powerful thing about the internet is that you as an individual now have a very empowered position relative to other producers of information, other businesses where you can consume a bunch of different points of view, a bunch of different opportunities to do business. You can get the lowest price and read reviews that the company itself hasn’t sanctioned, and have access to your peer network and to your social networks. Search, like the internet, becomes, and it necessarily needs to be, a proxy for that neutral, unbiased view of all the information that’s available.

The way we approached AskCity was a great example of this. We had leveraged a lot of CitySearch data but at the same time, we know that when people go out and want to see reviews, they want to see reviews from AOL Neighborhoods, they want to see reviews from Yelp and they want to see reviews from all these other points of view too so we go and scrape all those and fold them into the CitySearch stuff. We give access to all those results that come up on AskCity. If they’re, for instance, at a restaurant, you can get OpenTable reviews and you can get movie reservations through Fandango and other things like that. Those companies have nothing to do with IAC. Those decisions were borne from user needs and from us looking as individuals in particular urban areas, and asking “Hey, what would I want to come up?” So we’re going to be very balanced with being at the right time. We know from previous experience from AOL that the walled garden thing doesn’t work. It’s just not what people expect from search and not what they expect from the internet, so that lesson’s been learned. I don’t know how much it would be different if we had some dominant market share over search, but that’s even more reason for us to be appealing to as wide a population as possible.

Of course, with personalization looming on the horizon, I had to ask Michael about Ask’s plans for increasing relevance and disambiguating intent. It appears they’re putting their eggs in a basket called “Edison.”

The other major thing that’s going on right now is that we have fully revamped how we’re taking this. We developed Direct Hit late 90’s technology. And then the Teoma technology we acquired. And really, it’s not that we’re taking those to the next level, we got all of that stuff together and over the past three years, we’ve been saying, “Okay, what do we have and what’s unique and differentiated?” So there’s a lot of great user behavior data that Direct Hit understands. We have a whole variety of things there and that’s unlocked, that’s across all the people coming in and out over time but not any personally identifiable type of stuff. And then there’s the Teoma stuff, which is good at seeing communities on the web and then expertise within the communities and how communities relate.

So right now, even though we have personalization stuff and My Stuff and other things that are coming up, we’re investing a lot more in the next version of the algorithm and the infrastructure for us to grow what we call Edison. And we started talking about that a week ago, since AG (Apostolos Gerasoulis) mentioned it, so that across a lot of user data it understands a lot about the context from the user intention side and then, because we’re constantly capturing the biology of the web and its communities and how they’re related, we then matching them to the intention and the map of the web as it stands and the blogosphere as it stands and other domains as they stand. Our Zoom product, which is now on the left under the search box in the AskX experience and it’s on the right on the live site, is the big area that we’re going to more passively offer people different paths. If you search for U2, it’s going to tend to bring up news, and product results, and video results and images, and a Smart Answer at the top of the page. It’s also going to know that there’s U2 as the entity, the music band and therefore search the blogosphere but just search within music blogs. So what it’s doing, over time, is trying to give a personalized experience that’s informed by lots of behavior and trying to capture the structure of the web.

I wrapped up by asking Michael where Ask would be in two years if he had his way.

We’d definitely have significantly more than 10% market share. My point of view from dealing with the user experience is that I’ve been proud of the work that we’ve done and I really think that we’ve been very focused and innovative with a very talented team here. We’re really hoping that as we look at the rest of the year and we put out Edison and the AskX experience, that we become recognized for taking chances and presenting the user experience in a differentiated way that people have to respond to us in the market and start adopting some of the things that we’re doing. Because of the amount of revenue that Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are dealing with on the search side, they often get a lot of press but our hope is really to take share and to hopefully have a user experience that informs and improves the user experience of our competitors.

In looking at the recent changes on the Ask and AskX interface, it appears that Michael’s on the right track. Although the Microsoft/Yahoo rumors appear to be just that for now, if the big three ever consolidate into two, I believe Ask has a real shot to pick up market share. Their biggest challenge is not the interface, but the back end infrastructure of their engine. The combination of Teoma and DirectHit technology have kept them in the ball game up to now, but if Google hits a relevancy home run with true personalization, the changes envisioned in Edison, although a significant step forward, might not be enough to keep them in the game. I’ve always said that one of the engines had to make a significant move to up the ante in the search game, but I didn’t think it would be Google. However, with their aggressive pursuit of personalization, Google is planning the same order of magnitude leap in relevancy performance that first characterized their entry into the search space. And because this is literally powered by Google’s own users, it’s very tough for a competitor to match that.

But personalization will take time, and of the 4 major properties, Ask is by far the most innovative in interface experimentation. In the short term, or in the case of Google striking out with personalization, Michael’s wish just may come true.

I’ve posted a full transcription of my conversation with Michael on my blog.

Gord Hotchkiss is CEO of Enquiro, a search marketing firm that produces search engine user eye tracking studies and other research. The Just Behave column appears Fridays at Search Engine Land.

Spotted via LiveSide, Imagine Live Search is a new experimental search engine from Windows Live. Like those from Ask (Ask X), Google (SearchMash) and Yahoo (Alpha), it provides a mixture of results all on the same page. Below is a look at Microsoft’s new test bed search engine, Imagine Live Search, as well as a comparison to the other test bed search engines from the other providers.

Imagine Live Search: http://search.imagine-live.com/

I figured I do a search for [george bush] and show you some of the features. Here is a quick overview of the page:

Let me go through each element:

The top left organic side of the page has the search phrase, the number of results, a news results box and then the organic listings:

That covers the left hand side of the page. Moving over to the right hand side. For this search, the first thing we see is “Try these other searches.” It looks like:

You notice that you can search for movies, local, weather and sports. What does this have to do with my search query? I don’t know. But if you mouse over those icons, they do expand a bit to give it that “web 2.0″ feeling.

Neat? I guess.

Now we are given “related searches,” which is fairly self-explanatory.

Next up is image search results for george bush. Here is a look at those:

Yes, if you mouse over, we get web 2.0 happy again. But this implementation is useful, because we get more data about the image.

Then we have a local map result, that seems to be targeted to me, since I am based in NY but not targeted to my search query.

You can zoom in and out of this map by mousing over it and using your scroll wheel.

Followed by the local map is an additional news box. Some of the news in this box replicates the news in the top left hand box. But this one, if you mouse over, you get a news bubble with more content.

That covers Microsoft’s new test bed search site for a search on george bush. Let’s now compare.

Ask X: http://www.askx.com/

The same search, george bush, at Ask.com’s test bed search site, Ask X. I am only going to post one screen capture and then explain it.

Notice how Ask X placed the refinement options on the left. The left pane has a search box, the vertical search tab options, expand your search, narrow your search and related searches.

In the middle is the Smart Answer at the top, followed by organic results. All sporting nice mouse-over features.

On the right are more detailed vertical search options. But in this case, all are related to the search query, where the Microsoft version was not. We have images, news, shopping, dictionary and video results all refined to a search on george bush.

For more on Ask X see here.

Google’s SearchMash: http://www.searchmash.com/

The same search, george bush, at Google’s test bed search site, Search Mash. I am only going to post one screen capture and then explain it.

Google goes with a two pane approach, showing search results on the left hand side and the vertical results on the right. Each vertical result is enclosed in a expandable box. I have expanded most of them, minus the blog results.

The right hand side vertical searches are also all related to the search query, while Microsoft’s is not. We have image results, blog results, video results, and Wikipedia results. The video results will play within the search page, the others take you directly to the source page.

For more on SearchMash see here.

Yahoo’s Alpha: http://au.alpha.yahoo.com/

The same search, george bush, at Yahoo’s test bed search site, Alpha. I am only going to post one screen capture and then explain it.

Yahoo goes with a two pane approach as well. On the left are organic results and on the right are vertical search results.

Like the other search engines, but unlike Microsoft’s, Yahoo only shows related vertical search results on the right pane.

We have Flickr photos, Yahoo Answers, Google owned YouTube results, News results, Wikipedia results and an interesting sponsored results box. I wonder why they enclose the sponsored listings in a box like that. Note, that Ask X has sponsored results at the top of the organic listings, SearchMash does not have sponsored results, and neither does Microsoft for this search query.

For more on Yahoo’s Alpha, see here.

Final thoughts: Looking at all of these test beds, you might wonder why they are different than Google’s Universal Search. With Google Universal Search, rather than show the results in different segments of the search page, Google says it will blend results into one list.

In Search of… Better Ways to Search at the Wall Street Journal goes through the different ways search engines like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com use “spin off” sites to test new features. We have reported about all these in the past, but the article offers a nice overview of many of the methods search engines test features.

• Google’s Test Site: SearchMash.com
• Yahoo’s Test Sites: AllTheWeb and AltaVista
• Microsoft’s Test Site: Ms Dewey
• Ask.com’s Test Site: Ask X

The search engines also constantly test out new features to a subset of their users on their main sites.

Spotted via Marketing Pilgrim, this interview with Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone by Donna Bogatin at ZDNet on his vision and his role within both Ask and parent company IAC:

“We are a world-class technology company and we are able to take ingredients from our sister companies, luckily in many cases premium ingredients because they are number 1 and 2 in their category, and we can remix those ingredients into something that is market leading in a particular vertical. That is exactly what we did with AskCity.”

Lanzone also talks about the new AskX site, other future additions in vertical search, and of course, the future of the company’s relationship with Google, with the agreement between the two companies in paid search set to expire in just under a year. It’s a good read.

The Read Write Web blog first spotted Ask.com testing a new interface they named Ask X. The new interface sports a steel background for the home page with more goodies inside.

A search on Ask X for barry schwartz shows a three column pane interface. On the left hand side is the search box, where you can type and as you type you see search suggestions appear below the search box [Note From Danny: Pity this doesn't happen on the home page as well].

In the middle column is a smart answer, followed by two paid listings and then the organic results, with Ask.com’s binoculars. You can also save to “my stuff” each result, if you mouse over them, notice the notepad with a plus sign.

On the right pane you see image results, latest RSS results from blogs and the wikipedia entry of Barry Schwartz (not me, the other one).

Gary Price himself has a bunch more details about the new release, so check it out here.

You can also see more information at Ask.com and access Ask X at http://www.askx.com/.

My personal thoughts? I like it.