New From Ask.com: RSS Smart Answers, Latest Links Directly on Results Web Results Pages
Last week we posted about some new Smart Answers from Ask.com using data from the CIA World Factbook posted directly on results pages. Well, another week and Ask.com is announcing a new entry in their Smart Answer arsenal.
This time around it's the release of "RSS Smart Answers."
In a nutshell, when you now enter the title of a blog or feed, the three most current headlines are placed at the top of the Ask.com results page, before the ads and before the organic links. These headlines are updated in near real time. Of course, not each and every feed is in there but the SA team is working to add more feeds into the SA format in a timely manner. More info about the service will be available soon. Don't confuse this new web search feature with Ask's new feed/blog search.
Again, this is just an early release. Look for more sources and features in upcoming weeks.
Comment from Gary: A couple of people emailed me asking about this new Ask.com feature. It was in the works long before I joined Ask.com. That said, I think it's very exciting. Why?
1) In the future we hope to use RSS feeds from not only blogs but from other types of info sources. Let's say someone enters a library name, they might not only see web results (as expected) but other library info (new books might be one example) that's being syndicated via RSS. With the growing amount of non-blog feeds/syndicated content out there, it's easy to start thinking about the possibilities.
2) Access up to the minute content with no fuss, without even needing to know about a specialized interface or database. Remember, as statistics have shown, lots of people don't know about RSS. It's sometimes easy to forget this fact. A service like RSS Smart Answers makes as it as easy as simply typing in the name of the blog or feed into the search box. I think this is a useful way to not only get the content in the hands of more people but also (potentially) get more involved with RSS maybe moving on to an aggregator.
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