According to a simple test by Danny Sullivan (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3361971) AskJeeves offers the least amount of free results as a percentage of results on the SERP.

How do you think that this will play out for Ask?

I was kind of surprised by this but the ads do all appear before the organic results so it looks like there are more sponsored vs. organic listings.

Yeah, they do throw up to ten sponsored results right at you on top of the organic results. In fact, I can't even see the organics unless I scroll down. Seems to me that they could place those ads to the left but hey if they are making money off the ads, they are probably happy with it.

I wonder how many people actually use ASL anyway. I know that besides checking client’s positioning, I have never used them as a searcher. I do hope they stick around as a player however. Google and Yahoo need competition.

Yeah, they do throw up to ten sponsored results right at you on top of the organic results. In fact, I can't even see the organics unless I scroll down. Seems to me that they could place those ads to the left but hey if they are making money off the ads, they are probably happy with it.

I wonder how many people actually use ASL anyway. I know that besides checking client’s positioning, I have never used them as a searcher. I do hope they stick around as a player however. Google and Yahoo need competition.

Between the Branded Banner ads, the Premium Listings and then other Paid ads it does get hard to find a free search result....

I still think the competition will be coming from the East... Asia will start here maybe at first for Asian languages in US... where many Asians here are going as it is... so they may as well have a big push to sign companies for advertising and once offices are established add languages... sort of like Google's moves right now into GMail and Google Groups...

Shouldn't relevancy prevail? Teoma has a very interesting and unique way of determining relevancy. Ask is powered by Teoma, only problem is, is that the first 10 results are paid results. Paid results are not often as relevant as organic results.

I like Teoma itself (www.teoma.com) and use it from time to time. They only show 2 sponsored ads and they are clearly separate from the natural results. It was too bad when Ask bought them IMO just like when Looksmart bought WiseNut. Both could have been good contenders with Google but the big companies stunted their growth.

Both could have been good contenders with Google but the big companies stunted their growth.

I think the other companies kinda stunted their growth some, but I doubt either could have competed with Google. Google was way better branded and made way smarter partnerships right out the gate.

Other than having sketchy results at the end of last year / beginning of this year and having people pulling a bogus privacy concern flag Google has not really done anything really wrong.

The have the best ad network with the broades features (except maybe Kanoodle). They have technology which competes with or is slightly better than most others. Despite many people specifically gaming their ranking system their results are just as good as any other engine. They also have an amazing brand.

The amount of sponsored listings on Ask certainly keeps me away. I much prefer Teoma over AJ. However I rarely use a SE for shopping type searches so maybe AJ has greater appeal to shoppers?

Ask is powered by Teoma, only problem is, is that the first 10 results are paid results. Paid results are not often as relevant as organic results.

Well maybe to us. But to the average searcher will they really know the difference, even if it is labeled as "sponsored". I remember some study that was done where people told researchers they thought the first 3 results were usually the most relevant, and didn't question whether they were sponsored or organic results.

Shouldn't relevancy prevail? Teoma has a very interesting and unique way of determining relevancy. Ask is powered by Teoma, only problem is, is that the first 10 results are paid results. Paid results are not often as relevant as organic results.
I keep seeing this stated but have to disagree. There are always a bunch of directory or other slightly related but nonrelevant results in the free searches... people who are spending money are generally a little more on topic so they can actual get some conversion.

Teoma is an excellent search engine and I believe that they would do themselves a favor by branding themselves as a research search engine to the professional community. I do a lot of education research for my company and Teoma is my search engine of choice for that purpose.

Ask Jeeves is a far cry from Teoma. I know that Teoma feeds Ask Jeeves; however, I agree that the paid results are interferring with the overall relevancy of the engine.

As much as we would like them all to be as abundant as Google and quiet enough to not have direct competition for our terms... that is a dream... we are going to have a lot of things to consider in the SEO and SEM worlds these days

I will never use ASK as long as they insist on framing results. I like Teoma proper.

I will never use ASK as long as they insist on framing results.

When did they start doing that?

I do not recall ever seeing them *not* do it. To be clear, I'm not talking about the SERP page. I'm talking about them framing any page you reach *from* the SERP page.

Yea I noticed that recently, but to be honest, I rarely use Ask. If I do want to use them, I use Teoma. But I noticed last week while doing some test searches with them and they framed the Web site within Ask. I hate that as well.

But I just don't remember them doing that in the past.

Have a look at how Google gives stock quotes

If you are looking for products, paid search results are more relevant than natural search. Merchants know better than to throw their ads up anywhere.