Ask Jeeves Inc. on Tuesday launched its first proprietary technology for image search, which is the second-leading type of search on Ask Jeeves.

The new tool includes Ask Jeeves's internally created index of Web images, improvements to its image search ranking algorithms and Zoom-related suggestions for image searching. Zoom is Ask Jeeves's proprietary concept for clustering results into topics to help user find what they want.

“Our new image search combines Ask Jeeves’ unique text ranking and clustering algorithms with sophisticated image recognition technologies and our new image index,” Apostolos Gerasoulis, executive vice president of search technology for Ask Jeeves, said in a statement.

With the new image technology, Ask Jeeves, an Oakland, Calif., company owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, is expanding Image Smart Answers, so pictures can be saved in users' personal MyJeeves folder by clicking the 'save' link under each image. Smart Answers appear at the top of the search results page for queries such as "pictures of Mount St. Helens" from the main Web channel.

Image search accounts for 16 percent of all searches on Ask Jeeves, company officials said.