Three years after being killed off, Jeeves is back from the dead

Remember Jeeves? He was the fictional valet who fronted the search engine Ask.com for a decade, until being unceremoniously axed in 2006.

Well, he's back - for British users at least.

Jeeves has been resurrected to return to his old job as Ask's mascot after the American-owned company decided to plump for another rebrand. Not a bad, considering most people are worried about losing their jobs, rather than getting new ones.

On Ask's website, the character of Jeeves - who is, of course, based on the PG Wodehouse character - explains why he's returned in a forced-sounding piece of copywriting that brings to mind Dick Van Dyke's turn in Mary Poppins.

I popped out three years ago to travel the world in a quest for knowledge, and I've returned to Blighty armed with answers. During my sojourn, research showed the public wanted me back, which I found jolly touching.

Barry Schwartz at SearchEngineLand picked the story up, and asked Ask's European MD Cesar Mascaraque why Britain gets Jeeves back but the United States doesn't. The reply?

"The same desire was not found in the US, although Ask admitted they did not run similar polls in the US... Mascaraque also added that Jeeves is more of a British character than a US character."

Well, without any comparable numbers that's a claim clearly open to dispute - particularly given that it is Americans who are most likely to identify with the stereotyped image of Britain as a land staffed by Woosterian butlers. But essentially it's shorthand for saying "our brand is being run by focus group".

The real question, of course, is whether bringing Jeeves back will make any difference to Ask.com's popularity. It's been constantly tweaking its systems and trying to play up its underdog image - remember the anti-Google campaign a couple of years back? But despite all that, the search engine has consistently failed to make inroads against its competitors - and in recent years Google has battered everyone in sight to 80% market share in the UK.

Three years ago, an Ask executive told me that "the internet has moved on and consumer have moved on... they don't understand the relevance of him any more: it's time to move the brand on too".

It's a stark turnaround from that sort of statement to today's rebranding. And despite the attempt to dress it up as bowing to the will of the people, all bringing back Jeeves really does is highlight the company's inconsistency and confusion about its identity. That's not going to help them much.