GlynMusica - 9:53 am on Apr 25, 2003 (gmt 0)

"AskJeeves has a surprising market share (considering how ugly the site has always been) and they do send me traffic."

I've got relatives that really enjoy using AskJeeves because they say

"you can type in a question and it gives you an answer."

While the same is true of all search engines I don't know of any that emphasise the "natural language" approach as offered up by Jeeves and his "what can I help you find today".

And while the site design might be ugly (although at least it IS a design where other engines just put a logo!) after you type something to search for the page of results is broken down so that a user can see..typing in "Cars" as a keyword..

1. Where can I find information on the new xxx
2. Where can I research or buy a xxx
3. Where can I find a quote for xxxx
4. What kind of extended warranty is best for my vehicle?

And this kind of reasoning makes sense to some of the people I know. Also, these people don't care who is supplying who or whether it was paid for or not(which is also something that can sometimes be overlooked when deep in the SEO debates).

They only want an answer.

I rarely use AskJeeves but then I don't consider myself an AskJeeves target, but for those that do I know they think that "the butler is so helpful!"

I'd really like some proper data on AskJeeves target market, as I would the others. Not "we supply 70% of all searches", but something that tells me more about the real end users. This kind of information would be really handy as you could then direct users coming from search engines to a site design that reflected that search engines demographic (ooops, is that cloaking!).

Mary aged 60 is not going to have learnt the same usability rules for website surfing as James, 25, who's just completed a degree in Computer Science. And at the end of the day that could cost you a conversion, and I would like my clients to succeed instead!

Glyn.