AnswerFarm Technology from Ask.com

I recently blogged about advancements we’re making in semantic search technology here at Ask.com – that we’ve been testing our DADS, DAFS, and AnswerFarm technologies on NASCAR because it’s rich with structured data.

Now that we’ve entered NASCAR through partnerships, we’re going to apply our search technologies to this category even more deeply.  In addition to DADS technology, we think our AnswerFarm technology can be leveraged in an interesting way to help users learn more about this sport.

Suppose you are new to NASCAR (like I am).  There’s a lot of information about this sport on the web today and there are some very good content sources to get started.  But, we’ve been toying with the idea that learning about the sport may best be accomplished by “seeing it” through NASCAR’s millions of loyal fans.  In the Ask Q&A channel (click on “lots of answers” on our homepage to get there), you can see all of the different questions being asked about the sport across the web: What does NASCAR stand for? Why is NASCAR so popular? Are NASCAR drivers athletes? ...It’s like being a fly on the wall in a room full of lots of interesting chatter. 

The technology behind the Ask Q&A channel is called AnswerFarm technology. We built it by crawling and extracting question/answer pairs from across the web – more than 100 million question/answer pairs from several hundred thousand sources – and it is, no doubt, the most comprehensive and diverse repository of question/answer pairs in the world.

Here’s another example: search for NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon. The Ask Q&A channel has more than 1,400 question/answer pairs collected from across the web… a massive Jeff Gordon “FAQ.” The Q&A channel is unedited, sometimes a little noisy… and therefore a lively and candid barometer of what people are discussing on any given topic.

Take a look at Jeff Gordon…
http://www.ask.com/ans?q=jeff+gordon&o=0&l=dir&qsrc=2872

Why Jeff Gordon is Jealous of Carl Edwards' Yaw 

…and Tony Stewart
http://www.ask.com/ans?q=Tony+Stewart&qsrc=2454&o=0&l=dir

Why do they call Tony Stewart "Smoke"?

…and Bobby Labonte
What do you think Bobby Labonte will do? (which we’ve answered… read today’s press release!)

The Ask Q&A channel covers a whole world of topics, and we’re building it into the largest repository of answered questions in the world.

Stay tuned for more search technology updates from us. My colleague Keith Hogan, VP of Search Development, will be speaking at the SMX West conference in a few weeks. He’ll be blogging about that, and will update you on other search technology initiatives we’re working on here at Ask. Stay tuned!

Tomasz Imielinski
EVP of Global Search and Answers