• The Ask.com Blog , Wednesday, August 27, 2008 1:15 PM

Erik Collier digs into the latest iteration of Ask's foray into semantic search, searchable TV listings--proving that innovation is still alive and well at the sometimes forgotten engine.

"Our Ask TV listings uses our patent-pending technology DADS (Direct Answers from Databases) to answer queries and questions from structured data feeds and databases," Collier says. "DADS provides highly accurate answers to queries which are relevant to a given topic. Instead of using traditional keyword search algorithms, our technology can deliver much deeper, more precise search results based on understanding of a query meaning rather than syntactical text matching."

So a user can enter a query like, "Is CSI on TV this Wednesday afternoon?" or "horror movies tonight" and get actual listings within the results. Ask TV covers over 100,000 shows across 10,000 stations, with new info updated daily. And users can also personalize the results to show content from their favorite stations.

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