Ask.com Trying To Join the Top 3 SEs.

Has anyone else seen the Ask.com commercials during prime time TV? Over the last week or so I have seen ASK running commercials during prime time TV shows. The commercials look nice but does ask.com have enough marketing power to climb up with the big boys to make a push for that next big SE?

 

They have a marketing budget!
Easy to remember name.
Bit easier it seems than google.
They can at the best become number 2, behind google.

Or it could be, they are pushing hard so that when they get so much of the search market, they can sell out for big bucks to google, yahoo or somebody else.

 

I have seen the ads too. And to be honest I just tried the new Ask and I was pretty impressed.

I hated Ask Jeeves before but I must admit their new interface is innovative: direct link from wikipedia, "preview" feature to avoid spam site, etc.

If you have not tried you should. I made a few basic searches and their search algorithm has definitely improved. I *may* visit them more for basic searches.

For advanced search I think I will stick with google. But in my opinion the new Ask is definitely better than Y! or MSN.

-Ted

 

Advert is the word!
Three above the search results, four below the results.
Hopefully Ask will keel over and die, otherwise we might as well give up trying to optimise sites, and just pay over the bucks!

 

True and flase. They can only be number 4th which they already are. Behind google, yahoo and msn. They can only increase their market share from 1.6% to <10% at best.

 

What I like about Ask is the drive. The positive energy amongst the employees. They are all very outgoing individuals and very much "people people". Ask does very well networking to the point where some major companies have made it mandatory for their employees to only use ask.com for doing searches when working. What I don't see from Ask is search results or an algorithm which would be making any headlines whatsoever if it wasn't for their promotional skills. What exactly is that algo? A mix of msn and Yahoo!?

I'd like to see Ask succeed (they've thown a great SES party ), but I'd prefer to have the quality of their search results corrolate growth wise

 

I do not see ask doing well...

 

Thats an outrageous statement to make. Ask.com isnt even on the radar yet at all and they seem to be making buzz with webmasters but lack at the search department which is what's important because a webmaster wouldnt care about a search engine that doesnt have users no matter how much money they throw away and events they host. I dont understand why are they coming out with commercials when there algo is so nasty at the moment. Like said above, they should focus very hard on algo because the competition is very strong and they wont get any real market share with just a limited advertising budget that the other companies already can go beyond.

Msn is coming out with a fresh engine soon once again which should be interesting. Google is holding its position very well and yahoo is a very big player in the industry and is currently leading ahead very much while still at second place. Also when the 'new' msn was coming out it made such a huge buzz and ASK's current attempt is pretty weak even just to compare that.

I dont see any bright future for ASK at the moment if they dont actually get a real engine. Otherwise they should stick to another niche or go into another market area.

 

I see a future because people like them. Me personally, I would love to see Ask replace MSN when it comes to popularity. But then again IMO MSN should be ranked #250 on the list of the top 1,000 best search engines

 

It comes down to the content for the surfers and MSN as a portal is beyond more useful then the current ASK. While the MSN search engine is pretty weak at the moment they aware and are going at a round #2 to fix things up.

ASK on the other hand comes out with some lame Teoma algo which is nothing new and just go at it with some waterdowned advertising.

I am rooting for MSN to be honest. MSN has a decent market share and they are trying. They did come out with something original out, not good by any means but original and their next MSN engine hopefully will fix this.


Let's face it, at the moment ASK is trying to suck up to webmasters and industry users, when are they going to do something with their engine.

 

LOL yea Right. MSN is a very good search engine. They are newer, but they do have good results for being so new.

 

What are yall talking about Ask.com is way better then msn. Even when it was askjeeves it was better, Google still kicks there but, and yahoo owns google in the images and video searches but you cant beat google in web searches.

 

I think we're all overestimating the standards the average web surfer requires for their searches. I think that people use what they know. They don't always use the algo that they like best. If they think the butler looks cool, they will use ask again, if they like Yahoo! and AOL because they have an email account there and read their news, they may search over there just out of convenience. What it comes down to is often name recognition. Google definitely has that because of its quality. Other search engines need to work harder on getting it. But once they've got it, they can be a major search engine despite a technically inferior algorithm.

 

Ask spiders my sites way over 5000 times a day yet i get 0 hits from them..

I'm about to deny their robot...

 

Really? I get a few visitors from them, not many though. Are you ranked in ask?

 

ask have been running massive advertising campaigns in the uk too. I think thier search results aren't very good, msn and google are a lot better.

 

If they get a large enough market share then maybe Bill Gates will buy them.

 

their ads on fastclick has an extremely high cpm rate...i mean for banners, and leaders...I mean high! un heard of.

 

$4CPM for a leaderboard high?

 

... or the big G.