The search engine company Ask Jeeves Inc. (www.ask.com) announced on May 26 that it is launching a new feature designed to provide speedier answers to inquiries entered into its search engine. Ask Jeeves will display a "Web Answer" to many of the requests that its search engine processes. For instance, if someone enters "world's largest lake" into Ask.com's search box, the top result will include a snippet listing the Caspian Sea, including its size and location.
Ask Jeeves is also introducing a feature called Zoom, focused on determining the precise objective of a search request. Zoom lets people narrow or broaden the field of search results, as well as view related concepts. For example, for a search on the term "cancer," visitors can narrow it to types of the disease, or they could expand it to related illnesses.
