Progress EasyAsk

Price: Licenses from $100,000 to $500,000, or percentage of improved sales.
Platform: Windows 2000 Professional, 2003 Server, Windows NT; Sparc Solaris; Unix; Linux.

EasyAsk, Inc. was bought by Progress Software Corporation in 2005.
Progress EasyAsk offers four applications, each based on the EasyAsk search and query platform: EasyAsk for Commerce B2C, business to consumer; EasyAsk for Commerce B2B, business to business; EasyAsk for the Enterprise, for internal business purposes; and EasyAsk for ISVs, making the EasyAsk search functionality available to incorporate programs created by independent software vendors.

Features

Provides a guided search.

Mainly designed for relational databases, with a focus on e-commerce applications and support self-service.

Integrates categories and browsing with search. Automates how promotions appear to users as they interact with the site.

Shows alternative and complementary products along with e-commerce search results.

Filters results according to user-defined pricing rules, product filtering by contract, or customer purchase history.

Supports both natural-language and keyword searches.

Offers phrase matching, column weighting/ranking, and value-based relevancy.

Metasearch feature sends queries to multiple search engines using SQL or text search syntax.

Can send queries to both internal and public search engines.

Indexes text files and database contents, both structured and unstructured data.

Simplifies matching of search requests with relevant results by using pre-defined vertical market dictionaries, thesauruses, and extended attributes tied to a particular market, i.e., apparel, education, manufacturing suppliers, outdoors, technology.

Keyword highlighting in search results.

Provides automatic summaries of documents to enable faster scan of contents.

Enterprise version is designed to retrieve answers from multiple sources across distributed content repositories. Supports existing security standards and protocols, and enables data security with definable usage rules for users and groups.

Event monitoring, on-demand query scheduling, automated altering and notification.

Enterprise version offers customizable web-based user interface and administrative tools.

Tracking and reporting features with extensive visualization options help administrators glean usage information from search logs.

Articles & Reviews

Sites Search for Search Services NRF Stores: October 2006 by Fiona Soltes

Gives examples of e-commerce implementations of EasyAsk and competitors such as SLI Systems Learning Search and Next IT.

No Rest for the Query Application Development Trends: January 1, 2006 by Alan R. Earls

Discusses healthcare organizations' use of Siemens Express Query, which incorporates the EasyAsk search engine, and touches on new developments in search engine markets.

In the shadow of Google The Boston Globe: January 17, 2005 by Robert Weisman

Profiles three Boston-area search engine companies, including EasyAsk, Dotomi Inc., and Eliyon Technologies Corp.

At Talbot's, a search for increased web sales pays off Internet Retailer: August 13, 2002

Report on a presentation by the e-commerce merchandise manager for Talbot's clothing store online. She gave examples of problems searches, such as customers looking for "clutch" (meaning a purse) and getting irrelevant results. At Talbot's, EasyAsk was installed in less than a month, and it recognizes the context of search queries. With the new search engine and a search field on the front page, the number of product searches increased 267%, while average orders grew 18% and conversion rates improved by 34%.

EasyAsk Delivers Precise Answers to Business Questions Throughout the Enterprise DM Review: July 2001 by Fred Ferguson

Case study of an intranet at Curriculum Associates, an educational publishing company. The inventory and order databases were made accessible via the EasyAsk front end, so employees could ask relatively simple questions and get useful reports. It was a big improvement over the previous SQL interface.

Search Engines Improving? Ask EasyAsk boston.internet.com, March 28, 2001 by Gavin McCormick
Starting from a skeptical view of natural language search, the author praises the EasyAsk approach which allows richer searching, such as limiting results by price. It also and locates items even when there is no exact word match, and learns from failed searches.

Revving Up the Search Engines to Keep the E-Aisles Clear New York Times, February 28, 2001 by Lisa Guernsey (registration may be required to read this article)
Discusses the difficulty of locating items in online stores, referring to the Forrester report of last spring. Describes the use of thesaurus tools for synonym searching and taking advantage of database structure in online stores. Quotes the vendors Mercado, which provides search for WebVan and Tower Records, and EasyAsk, as well as the chief scientist at Verity.

If You "EasyAsk" You Shall Receive SoftwareMag.com, February 26,2001 by Julie Lavalee
Describes the product and it's use at Coldwater-creek.com, an online store with over 3,000 items. Particular praise for EasyAsk's tools to handle synonyms and its tracking and reporting features.

Helping Web customers help themselves Network World January 15, 2001 by John Dix
Describes the problems searching on sites such as Amazon, and proposes natural language searching as a solution, using EasyAsk.

Examples

Forbes.com - Business and financial news.

Talbots - Classic clothing store.

HP Shopping - A retail subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard.

Coldwater Creek - Women's apparel, accessories, and gifts.

Lillian Vernon - Gift, household, children's and fashion shopping.

Search Tools Product Report