Google vs. AskJeeves

A 1-round search battle

I recently read that AskJeeves (now “ask.com”) would be making some changes to try to reclaim some market share from Google. I hadn’t used that site in a while, so I decided to test it against Google. I came up with one of those questions that rattle around in my head:

How do they train oil tanker captains?

Ask.com Results (click to enlarge)

AskJeeves first gave me a series of text ads long enough to push the results halfway down the screen. The ads actually look like they are search results, and if you aren’t careful, you might mistake them for real results. They are titled “sponsored web results” which implies that they might be relevant to the search anyway, but none of these ads come close to answering my question.
The actual search results focus on oil spills, old superman movies, and drunken oil tanker captains. Not a single helpful result on the entire first page.

Google Results (click to enlarge)

Google, on the other hand, gave me 4 or 5 answers on the first page that looked promising: a couple on water transportation careers, and one that mentions that oil tanker captains use simulators to train.

ask.com isn’t getting my little market-share any time soon.