Today, the Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves) search engine announced a completely renovated search algorithm for its U.S. version, with the internationalized updates to come within the end of the month. Ask.com spokesmen declared that the product is now significantly faster, more reliable, and bringing more relevant results than ever, meaning they are confident their market share will soon grow to contrast the Google dominance.

The revamp will be the third in the history of this search engine. The last one — which took place last year — featured videos, images and audio clips in separate panels, but didn't sort the desired effect in improving the overall usability, exposing instead what has been one of the biggest issues of this search engine, the lack of relevancy in search results when compared to its main competitors.

With the latest update, the search engine also changed its looks, adopting a cleaner layout that closely reminds of some of its main competitors: users can now easily personalize details such as the background image with a few clicks, or conduct specialized searches looking specifically for images, news, or even user-contributed answers to common questions, living up to its tradition.

In fact Ask.com, formerly known as "Ask Jeeves", was launched in 1996 specifically with the aim of offering its users the ability to answer simply formulated questions when typed directly into its search box, a feature that Google later embraced by embedding in its databases automated answers with regard to the current time, , or even the foreing exchange market.

The latest enhancements aim at bringing relevant answers to its users on their first try

, unlike their main competitors, according to what Ask.com president Scott Garell said to InternetNews:

"The data still says it takes three to four clicks with the major search engines. With this launch, we've made great strides toward reducing that. [...] The strategy from a product perspective is to provide the best answer the first time, everytime. We want to reduce the distance between your query and the answer you want."

If the search engine can succeed in providing direct answers in response to a vast array of queries, Garell believes that the product will soon be able to gain market share to the expense of Google, which, according to comScore research, held about 63% of the market in August against Yahoo's 19.6%, Microsoft's 8.3 and Ask.com in fourth place with an estimated 4.8% of the entire search market.

But even the smallest shares in this highly profitable business entail considerable profits, which justifies the large investment that the company has put towards providing its users with a feature-rich engine, in an attempt to retain its customers and draw some more as well. As for speed, while Google is still undoubtedly setting the benchmark for everyone else, Garell said that the site is now delivering results about thirty percent faster than a year ago.

While conducting a search, it's hard not to notice a striking resemblance with the Google search results page, at least in its uncluttered layout and color scheme: however, unlike Google, every link provide a live preview of the page as well as site statistics for the last five months featured by Compete.com. Another useful feature is the suggestion box that, similarly to the Google homepage, yields matching results and suggestions as you type your query.

Overall, while searching for some of the low-traffic queries won't bring up as many results as Google, the new Ask.com updates certainly add to the user experience and have the potential to improve the search engine ranking in the market in the months to come.