What Does Ask.com Need to Do to Succeed?

[Kevin Newcomb]

Ask.com has been busy with several moves on both the search and advertising side. They've also spent a lot of money on a TV campaign to drive user interest. In a post on the SEW blog, What Should Ask.com Do?, I've outlined a recent discussion that's been taking place on a few blogs recently. The question is, what's the best strategy for Ask.com to follow to succeed against its much larger competitors?

[Kevin Newcomb]

So today, Ask.com launched its "Ask3D" interface, with new features that are meant to align more closely with the way people actually search. Ask3D offers a three-paneled SERP, with query refinements, Web search results, and vertical search results.

Eric Enge gives some great examples in his blog post, Ask Launches Ask3D. I've also gone through the changes in detail in today's SearchDay.

Think this is the right answer? Will it be enough?

[gravel72]

Kevin,

It still seems they are trying way to hard to push their “algorithm”.

<snip>

Thanks,
-John Ellis

[trooperbill]

i love the new layout
but would like adverts to be vertical down the right hand side not on top of the natural listings...


the cleaner the better, if they do this they'll be onto a winner

mark rushworth
web designer

[evilgreenmonkey]

Buy Google and scrap Ask.com?

[AnthonyCea]

Barry Diller is a man to be reckoned with, he is selling search like McDonald's sells hamburgers in going after the user with mass market TV ads.

Ask does not have enough data center power, but none of the search engines do, they do not spider the web enough, their search index is quite old because of this lack of capacity, so to move forward they need to invest billions in data centers as Google, M$ and Yahoo are.

All the search engines are way behind the curve of the web in regard to their ability to properly index all the content out there and it will take years and Billions to catch up.

[Discovery]

The new interface is nice and clean. I like the site previews for the organic listings, and the drill down search to the right.

However, as an advertiser ASK.com's returns have always been terrible. The bottom line is that they have no user base for their search services, so the only traffic they can provide you is from their other partner sites which are mostly garbitrage.

Discovery

[beu]

Call me crazy, but a way to submit your site would also be nice. All the other kids are doing it!

[natureday]

I really love ask. I advertise on many search engines and they really pull their own weight. I hope people realize they are cooler then google some day!
ANna