Ask.com, formerly Ask Jeeves, has closed after almost 30 years. The search tool was one of the first to use natural language queries, something that's arguably come back into fashion today.

When Ask Jeeves launched in 1997, the best technological approach to helping people find content on the World Wide Web was still an experimental field. Some approaches involved literally trying to build a directory of websites like a White or Yellow Pages: these quickly became unworkable as the number of sites exploded.

Another common approach was to base search around specific terms: the theory was that a user who wanted to find a site covering the Miami Dolphins would type that exact terms in and the search engine would find the most relevant sites.

Evolution of Natural Language Search

Ask Jeeves, which based its branding on the idea of an Internet butler, worked on the idea that people using the web often wanted to ask a specific question. It encouraged users to type in a question in ordinary language and then it would try to find a site that contained the answer, either directly or indirectly. (Source: techradar.com)

It's an approach that would later be taken up by Google, albeit developed slowly. (Google's big advantage was that it based sites not just on how well they matched a search, but by their perceived authority and credibility based on which other sites linked to them).

Natural language processing has arguably become even more important to search in recent years. It's arguably led to a boom in unnaturally written or padded out articles which exist solely to web searches that ask a specific question such as "what time does the Super Bowl kick off?"

The Modern Search Landscape

It's also been a key driver in more people turning to large language model (LLM) AI chatbots when searching for information. While they may not always give a reliable answer, LLMs often do a good job of understanding a complex question.

Despite its pioneering, Ask.com (as it was renamed in 2006) has struggled to compete since Google became dominant. It has averaged around 10 million visits a year, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to Google reportedly handling 5 trillion searches a year. (Source: theregister.com)

What's Your Opinion?

Do you have any memories of using Ask Jeeves in its prime? Do you find natural language questions more helpful than keywords? Will AI-powered chatbots eventually make traditional search engines obsolete?