Ask.com seems to have gotten a lot smarter afterloosing its butler in 2007, bucking the trend of full automation of computingsearch engine results. Ask launched a new version of its search engine onMonday that has further refined its search terminology, allowing users to getanswers by typing in questions the way they'd ask a real person rather than acollection of keywords.

The search engine was first launched in April 1997 andhas since added several other engines to its stable, including a UK version. The service attempts to provide informationin simple question-and-answer format and avoid the Boolean strings which givethousands of matches, many specious, to users of other search engines. Usingnatural language processing technology and human editorial skills, theprogrammed attempted to determine both the semantics (the meaning of the words)and syntactic (the meaning of the grammar) of each question.

The revamped search engine includes a new userinterface with three new technologies -- DADs (Direct Answers from Databases),DAFS (Direct Answers From Search) and AnswerFarm that offer users the abilityto search the Web using commonly spoken language. The new technology isdesigned to serve up answers quicker in a bid to increase its share of themarket dominated by Google.

Ask.com's uniqueness lies in its ability in fieldquestions from web users as they would ask when speaking to a person. Forexample ?what is the search engine optimisation?? The new technologies areintended to produce more relevant results so users click less. "Our goalis to return the best answer the first time, every time. We think its a betterapproach. We make your search faster and we're trying to reduce the amount ofclicks it takes for you to find what you're looking for," said said ErikCollier, vice president of product management at Ask.com.

"The Ask.com redesign is not a game changer.Google has incredible brand recognition. An incredible number of U.S. consumers are in the habit of Googling. We know thatmedia habits are hard to change. According to IDC's recent U.S. consumer online attitudes survey, 75 percent ofonline Americans said they had used Google.com in the past 30 days whereas only15 percent said they had used Ask.com," she concluded.