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Ask.com's Rising Star

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the going-up dept.

hdtv writes "Fortune magazine takes a look at Ask.com, a site originally designed to respond to queries in human language that grew into a full-blown search engine after the Teoma acquisition. According to Fortune, Ask.com has many features not available with rivals -- topic clusters, quick facts from Wikipedia on the search page, and, (what counts most) fewer ads than any of the rivals. Currently Ask.com maintains 5.9% share, a share that Fortune is sure will grow."

6 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. What about punctuation? by corsec67 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The next thing I want in a search engine is for punctuation to be a part of the search.
    For example, how do you search for the difference between the following 2 LaTeX commands:
    \circle
    \circle*
    (I know the answer now, but I had to look it up in my reference book, as google was just about worthless for my "latex star" query)
    --
    If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
  2. Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Why is Wikipedia any less trustworthy than any other encyclopedia? The articles can be independently edited and verified by multiple people if necessary to ensure accuracy. Regular encyclopedias on the other hand rely on the accuracy of a single company's team of editors and we've seen time and time again that they make mistakes constantly. My professors had no problem at all with the research I did for my dissertation that I backed up with facts from Wikipedia*.

    *Well, they didn't KNOW the facts were from Wikipedia, but they didn't question them.

  3. Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?! by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The title of the article is "Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival", but I still want to know (and this is the third time I've asked):

    Why is Ask.com considered a Google "rival" if it primarily serves Google ads?

    (How do I know? It serves an ad I've only placed through Google.)

    1. Re:Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?! by joeykiller · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Would you say MSN Search was _not_ a competitor of Yahoo Search, just because of the fact that they shared the ad system? (MSN Search used Overture (Yahoo) Ads until recently, when they in the US switched to their own AdCenter) I think the article indicates that Ask won't be using Google Ads indefintely, but that they'll contractually obliged to continue using Google for quite som time. From the article:
      its ads are provided by that much-larger competitor, in a deal that extends through the end of next year.

      There's no economy in search ads before you have a large number of advertisers. This is because of the auction driven pricing and the fact that you buy keywords and search phrases. So before you're big enough on your own, you need the scale of a bigger network to get any revenues to speak of.

      So shall they make it completely on their own, they need to grow. That's why they, in my eyes, are a Google Competitor, even though Google (for the time being) earns money on their success.

      PS! One irony: Ask tries to monetize Image Searches with Google Ads, an area where Google is not trying to earn money yet. So the irony goes both ways, apparently.
  4. A cheer for bathwater by xkr · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The 'old' ask.com was pure crap. The 'new' ask.com appears to be blatant attempt to copy google in order to get a piece of their billion dollar valuation pie.

    But I tried out a couple of genuine searches that frustrated me in both google and wikipedia. Their results were significantly better. :) :) So I am going to eat a bit of crow and use them from time to time.

    Competition is a good thing. We wouldn't want google turning into another M$, would we? So what if they are re-using google ads and wiki content? The US media has been serving up used bathwater for decades.

    --
    I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
  5. ads are not bad things by entendre+entendre · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Fewer ads doesn't make a site better. In fact the reverse could be true, if the ads are sufficiently well targeted. The better the ads are targeted, the more likely they are to be part of the signal rather than part of the noise.

    It's the poorly targeted ads that waste pixels and bandwidth. But ad targeting is getting better over time and "fewer ads" doesn't mean "fewer blinking banners about irrelevant crap" like it did a few years ago.

    And if you're searching with intent to buy, ads are even more likely to be signal rather than noise, and search sites with better ads may show you what you want in less time.