Any Tips on Getting Our Sites Indexed by Ask?

[jasper]

We currently operate three Web stores with great success. Our rankings are great in Google, Yahoo & MSN. The sites are constantly visited by the robots. All is great with the Big 3.

Then there's Ask! :mad:

We've been trying for at least two years to get indexed into their site.

We tried to troubleshoot the issue ourselves. No luck.

We asked internet consulting agencies to help. No luck.

We asked Ask! for advice. No reply.

We even bought Ask! ads to cover the gap. What a mistake! :mad:

I'm ready to give up on this company all together, but free traffic is good for business.

We'd greatly appreciate any help possible. If you've fixed this issue for other clients, please let me know. Thanks.

[pokersearch]

I rank great on a couple of hot terms and words in ask. I have no clue why. But I might be able to offer you a clue why they are such a PITA, I ranked with these terms since '97, so things just might be a bit stagnent over there.

[jasper]

Thanks for the post. Our home pages rank well too. But, they are the only pages indexed.

Yes, we have a dynamic site, but I don't want to do a bunch of redirects just to get included in Ask. Our sites are not that complicated. The other engines seem to index them well.

In fact, we have some very simple php pages with no dynamic URLs that don't even get indexed.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

[Dan01]

We are having trouble getting our new pages indexed. We used to use straight .htm pages. They got picked up all the time. Then we switched to a database driven site. Our pages are still getting picked up by Yahoo Google etc, but not by ASK.com.

The new URLs have ?q= in them. I am thinking this may have something to do with it.

[cdsad]

Hate to admit that we don't spend as much time on SEO as we should ... but I've always been focused on Yahoo, Google and MSN. Because our site is built in a pretty nice way and is rich in content, we do very well for a lot of keywords there. I just noticed today that we're not listed AT ALL on ask!

We have many other sites that link to us so I can't understand why we're not listed. We are listed (although not ranked high) for a .org domain (luckily it is still valid) that we no longer really use or broadcast. We went to .com more than three years ago.

Does the submission tip listed in the members section still work? They suggest sending an e-mail saying that your page would answer such-and-such a question. Given the rebranding, is that still valid?

The only reason I became concerned with Ask is because of all the marketing they are doing. If they become a bigger player, I sure would like to be already ranked high rather than try to figure it out then.

Thanks for anybody's help.

[jasper]

I've tried their help section. Its useless.

Frankly, ASK stinks! They advertise a better search tool, but we all know that it's junk. Perception and reality are entirely different.

From my perspective, their ad campaign may convince people to try them, but their search results won't convince anyone to switch. :rolleyes:

They should spend their money building a better mousetrap instead of promoting an inferior product.

[Dan01]

The only reason I became concerned with Ask is because of all the marketing they are doing. If they become a bigger player, I sure would like to be already ranked high rather than try to figure it out then.


Same here. I have always focused more on Google.

I shot off an email to them and they replied a few days later. They said that their spider just follows links and will likely get to our site...

jasper, one thing I like about their search is their list of other popular searches on the right. For instance, I might search for "home loans". The list on the right will include lists for other popular similar searches, like "refinance" or "second lender". Also, their idea of asking the question like "how to fix your credit" was pretty smart. Other than that, Google usually still provides better results. Sometimes Yahoo provides good results too. Yahoo was less willing to work with me though (business wise), so we are loyal Google people over here.