They've mulled it, they've even gone on a domain-name buying spree, but Ask Jeeves is giving up a plan to spin its sex-related answers off to a separate Web site, CNET reports. The main casualty, CNET says: a sex-savvy Jeeves counterpart named Mimi.
"Mimi was a possible domain for spinning out the adult answers," said Ted Briscoe, Ask Jeeves's consumer service general manager, to CNET. "She's going to stay among the shelves of domain names that won't be used."
Ask Jeeves has wrestled over sex answers for several months, anxious not to endanger its family friendliness while trying to accommodate a source of traffic and revenue from the profitable porn industry.
Briscoe tells CNET Ask Jeeves played with three options: continue with the status quo with Ask Jeeves itself answering most sex-related questions, with a warning jump screen before handing up X-rated links; a separate site under the Mimi character; and, getting out of the sex search game altogether.
And since Ask Jeeves won't get out of the sex business entirely, given strong user demand for such answers, they will settle for fine-tuning their current methods, CNET says.
"We have been able to tune the Q&A knowledge base through matching algorithms and scoring methods so that only a small percentage of people get adult results when they weren't looking for them," Briscoe tells CNET.
Enhancing what they have now may involve technology Ask Jeeves acquired with its proposed buy of Direct Hit, which ranks search results by amount of time previous searchers spent on returned sites. CNET says.
