Ready Reference for Hurricane Season

Hurricane season for the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico typically runs from June 1 to November 30. Ask.com has recently made some Smart Answer additions to assist in tracking this seasonal storm-related information.

A frequently used phrase in the library and research world is "ready reference." Its meaning deals with having resources to answer certain factual types of queries easily and quickly accessible. In the web age, this can also mean having specific web sites or pages at the ready.

Many of you probably keep frequently used and reliable information resources at your fingertips for quick and easy access. They might be on the bookshelf sitting right behind you at this moment or they could be bookmarks to important sites you use and have come to count on.

So, in essence it's about:

* Saving you time and effort. We could all use more time.

* Having some understanding of the quality, scope, currency and reliability of the resource often before using it.

To a certain degree this is what the Ask.com Smart Answer and Smart RSS programs are all about. Quality resources, easily accessible, saving you time.

Those of you who read our blog know that we are rolling new Smart Answers out all of the time. Today, is no different.

It's hurricane and tropical storm season and now Ask.com offers a hurricane and tropical storm Smart Answer at the very top of search results pages where our algorithm thinks it will be useful. If you type in hurricane warnings, you get both resources on the same page.

Ask.com has built a ready reference shelf for users with key and direct links from authoritative sources about hurricanes and tropical storms. A real time saver.

In a single location you can find everything from definitions from NOAA (National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration) to a storm tracker to direct links to the Red Cross, FEMA, and a great set of authoritative frequently asked questions also from NOAA.

That's not all.

A few weeks ago we also introduced RSS Smart Answers. These take real time feeds and place their content directly on web results pages when specific trigger terms are entered. Today, when someone enters the phrase "National Hurricane Center" not only get the web links they're expecting but also receive a real-time feed (at the top of a web results page) of news and advisories direct from these hurricane and tropical storm experts in Miami.

The Smart Answer Team