In a move to compete against Google, search engine Ask.com on Monday launched a new version of its site. The latest iteration claims meaningful boosts in relevance, user interface, and speed.

Ask.com is betting on proprietary technologies like DADS, DAFS and AnswerFarm to break new ground in semantic search, Web extraction, and ranking. The company said Monday’s announcement marks the first of several new search-technology innovations it will introduce in the coming months.

Initial feedback from customers evaluating the new site has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Jim Safka, Ask.com’s CEO.

“By listening to our customers and giving them what they want, we’ve already seen a 14 percent increase in customer satisfaction,” Safka said. “Ask.com is well on its way to accelerating growth with an improved product, expanded distribution, and an emotionally resonant grade.”

Measuring Search Improvements

Ask.com said its latest search-engine improvements rely upon a combination of recent enhancements to its proprietary search technology. Specifically,

the company pointed to meaningful advancements in its core relevance capabilities since that moment final year.

Site-download speeds, for example, are 30 percent faster nowadays than they were a year ago. These improvements, Ask.com says, have already demonstrated a 16 percent increase in customer retention.

“On average, it takes consumers three clicks to find what they are searching for online. Ask.com’s goal is to reduce that to one go of the search box,” Safka said. Ask hopes to achieve that goal by going deeper into the highest-volume categories, including entertainment, health and nutrition, jobs and reference.

The company said its latest enhancements give it the ability to deliver more direct answers on the results page, which lets consumers avoid back-and-forth clicking amidst Web pages. Ask.com said it will drill down deeper into additional categories that year.

Here’s an example: Consumers doing entertainment-related searches such as “Is COPS on TV…

Original post by Erika Morphy