Ask.com Adds One-Click Election Poll Information to Search Results

Ask.com, a web site that offers search for web sites, images, news, blogs, video, maps and directions, local search and shopping, launched their new “Election Poll Smart Answers” that gives you local polling information in just one click: and it’s a lot faster and easier than any other major search engine.
Ask.com Smart Answers are special search results placed at the top of the Ask.com search results page that have quick facts and links to authoritative content from highly respected sources.
To use the new one-click poll information, go to Ask.com and type in a question like “when do polls open?”

Then, all you need to do is click your state from the drop-down menu:

After clicking “Go”, Ask.com instantly shows the local poll hours and provides quick links to district poll locations and other voting information right on the first search results page.

According to Ask.com, this new Smart Answers feature is part of Ask.com’s mission to provide us with the best answer, the first time, every time. However, it appears that there are a “lot more clicks” required in order to actually find your polling place and where you have to vote. After going through the process on the Ask.com web site, I was then taken to the official State of Texas web site where I had to then perform an additional search at the State of Texas web site:

I hate to be cynical about all of the Ask.com new “one click” Smart Answers feature, but all that the Ask.com feature does is point you to your own state’s web site after you choose your state: that’s hardly “one click”. In fact, there are other helpful things that they could do that would make it easier, like actually recognizing your location and forwarding you directly to your state’s polling information.
What do you get when you use the Ask.com Smart Answers feature when you look to find your polling place and time?
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Nov 3rd 2008
Ask.com do certainly try to be innovative but unfortunately they never seem to come up with anything which is actually useful. Like you I’m not particularly impressed with this Smart Answers feature but at least they are trying to be different.
Nov 4th 2008
This is a good start on a useful service, but I do think that Ask hasn’t hit it out of the park yet. Google has a similar service that allows you to simply type in your address and in a few seconds provides you with your local polling location – on a map. I suppose it’s not a detail rich as Ask, but it’s definitely simple, easy and quick with only one click!
Nov 5th 2008
Good to see that Ask.com is actually coming up with something innovative, they have simply been allowing other search engines to trounce all over them lately. Hopefully some search engine starts to redistribute the Google power-share.
Nov 19th 2008
I don’t think that this will make ask.com take some part of the google, yahoo power-share of the internet. I commend them for the effort, it’s a good idea, but as I researched, google has a similar application. Now the question is, who started this application first, and who is the copy cat.