Perceptions of Ask / Teoma

[getvisible]

Just looking at http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/aj/teoma.htm and looking at how much traffic we get from them, I was thinking of what people think about their Ask traffic compared to other search engines and what they think of their stated algo strategy? Specifically:

Instead of ranking results based upon the sites with the most links leading to them, Teoma analyzes the Web as it naturally occurs - in its subject-specific communities - to determine which sites are most relevant. In December 2001, we integrated Teoma's search technology into Ask Jeeves, and within one year searchers' satisfaction with the site increased 45 percent.

[Brendon]

Teoma is probably the most advanced SE out there. However, they suffer from Ask having a ****e PR Dept. If they could pull it toghetr and promote it properly, they could take a big market share, as they have far less spammy results in most cases.

I've always found the traffic to be good quality, just very low compared to the Big 3. Their algo (some geo stuff) and crawling tech could do with a polish, but if they had more market share, they'd have the cash to do it.

They've got some very good people working there

[monk-i]

Yeah it tends to be better target traffic but you don't get enough of it! Id definitely agree that their PR department are s***.

Shame as well.

[Rich]

I haven't really looked at quality of results on Ask, but it does send me more traffic to a couple of sites than Google or Yahoo.

Ask Jeeves:38863
Yahoo:12667
Google:10804

They were also the heaviest crawler, but this seems to have dropped off a bit now Overall the traffic quality from Ask seems as good as the other two.

I think I read somewhere they were planning to drop the Jeeves and relaunch as just Ask.