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Ask Jeeves: Your Online Butler

Innovative online search service processes plain-language queries with surprising accuracy--and it's funny, too.

By Glenn McDonald, PCWorld   

Effectively searching the Web is an art and science unto itself. I spend a lot of time online, and over the years I've developed a sort of voodoo hodge-podge method of using search engines, directories, and plain intuition to find what I'm looking for. But a new search service has renewed my flagging hope that a single online resource can cut through the Web efficiently.

Ask Jeeves, described as "the Internet's first and only natural-language query valet," is truly a rare critter--an online search service that delivers accurate answers to plain-English queries with a remarkable degree of accuracy.

Frankly, the never-ending parade of overpromising, underdelivering Web search technologies offered up by the software industry just hasn't kept pace with the exponential growth of the Web. Ask Jeeves is a welcome exception. It uses a natural-language database to effectively pair plain-English queries ("Who invented the laser?") with relevant Web pages from a store of millions of Internet links.

Jeeves, Old Boy!
It works like this: Ask Jeeves processes your query and feeds it through a database of "question templates" (for example, "Who invented [blank]?"). A team of human content editors matches all templated questions with specific Web pages and other online information. It's an interesting blend of artificial and human intelligence, and for the most part, it works very well.

Another key to the success of this service is its clever interface. As the name suggests, Ask Jeeves wants to be perceived as your own personal Internet valet. Jeeves, represented by an icon of a digital butler, retrieves information or asks for clarification with a kind of reserved British graciousness. Some sample tutorial dialogue: "I've spent years perusing the Internet so you don't have to. Simply ask the question as if you were talking; none of that bloody Boolean stuff or keywords."

It lends a little human warmth to the process, strange as that may seem. It's all ultimately computer driven, of course, but if they'd named the service Ask HAL--well, it just wouldn't be the same.

"The reason the Jeeves character came about is that we wanted it to feel like you have a friendly Internet concierge sort of standing behind your shoulder," said Ask Jeeves President Rob Wrubel.

Is Good Help Hard to Find?
And old Jeevesy delivers the goods. I asked the question, "Where can I find good computer deals online?" Jeeves returned a page with four different template questions:

• Where can I find links to the best deals on [Computers]?

• Where can I find good deals on new [Computer Systems]?

• Where can I find good deals on new [Computer Speakers]?

• Where can I find good deals on new [General Computer Items]?

Each of the bracketed phrases can be clicked on to generate a drop-down list of other choices. I clicked on the first query and Jeeves escorted me to a page within the Consumer World site that lists links to discount computer suppliers online.

Ask Jeeves's knowledge database even processes the inevitable off-the-wall questions Internet users tend to throw its way. Ask "How long do I have to live?" and Jeeves takes you to the Internet Death Clock site, which calculates your probable day of death based on actuarial projections. Ask, "Where are my socks?" and you'll wind up at the Bureau of Missing Socks. Seriously.

A final note and an indication of Ask Jeeves's appeal: The venerable search engine Alta Vista quietly licensed the technology earlier this week and incorporated it directly into its search service.