Does Jeeves know all? (ask.com)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	ask.com
Date:	14/08/00 (5019 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Finds obscure stuff

Disadvantages: Doesn't find general stuff, returns limited number of results

Jeeves the online know it all butler has been getting a lot of press recently - most of it indifferent to it's results, but praising it's use of plain English.

The question that everyone wants to know is: "Does it work?" Well, the answer is yes (and no).

I have found that the more obscure the subject matter, then the more accurate Jeeves will be with his recomendations, but if you're searching for something a bit more mainstream, then Jeeves can get a tad confused and offer some really stupid and seemingly unrelated stuff.

It's a good idea in theory - ask Jeeves a question in plain English, and he'll pop up with web links that you need, but it doesn't work as often as it should.

You ask Jeeves a question, and to clarify, he'll come back with a list of questions that "he" thinks comes close to matching your original request - you hten pick one of these, and Jeeves does the search for you.

What I have found is that for each question you ask, jeeves will return one answer (i.e. one site) and he will always return the same site to you each time you ask the same question. Unlike say Google, or Yahoo, which reutrns all the sites in the category you ask for, Jeeves only returns one, and one only.

Another point that I feel I should bring up, is the fact that any result that Jeeves gives you, when clicked upon (if it is what you are looking for), is brought up within Ask Jeeves frameset, which makes finding the URL of the web site a bit more difficult to find, and requiring a button to be pressed, or another link to be followed, which is annoying and un-necessary.

Briely: good for finding obscure stuff, but otherwise, I'd use one of the mainstream search engines.

Summary: