Ask.com: Well worth a look, Google snobs

Any researcher worth her salt will tell you that no single search engine can serve all of your needs all of the time. As good and unevil as Google is, there are times I head over to Yahoo!, A9.com, Teoma, Hotbot, Looksmart, AlltheWeb and niche search engines.

Lately, though, I've been mightily impressed by Ask.com's latest upgrades. In a word: Wow! They have some of the best new features you've never heard of.

My friend Gary Price, whom I met years ago at a SearchEngineWatch.com conference, just took me on a tour of some of Ask's new functionalities. Here's a snippet:

First, check out Ask's new, spare home page, with an Ajax-powered mini-directory at the right (go ahead, drag and drop to change the order of the listings).

Next, click on Blogs & Feeds, enter a term, and behold the tabs at the top of the results page: Posts, Feeds and News. Nice.

OK, on to Ask's most impressive new feature: a Maps page that blows away Mapquest and Google Maps. Go ahead, enter your home address. Want to get somewhere on the map. You don't even have to type in the address — just right-click it. You can enter up to 10 locations on your route. Another nifty feature: walking directions! Forget the one-way streets, this is heaven for hikers.

That's not all. Want to change your destination? Don't retype the address — just drag the designated number to a new location. Cool, no? Love that Ajax, baby! You also have the option of seeing the same map as a physical map or an aerial map, taken from satellites or aircraft. (Another worthy recent entry is Microsoft's Live Local — wish we had this when I was working at Microsoft's Sidewalk city guide.)

Ask's Image search is top-notch, too. I'll start here instead of Google Images for my next photo search.

The heart of Ask's search directory is its Web search, natch, and here Ask excels at pulling out the most relevant answers. Type in best actor 1972 and see what you get. Type in weather Chicago (or your local city) and you get current weather. There's also an index of all the major bridal registries.

Lots more, but as I said, the new Ask.com is worth another look.