Ask.com's Rising Star

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."

Comments

Lack of ads counts most?

[MarkByers]

I don't think anyone is really bothered by ads any more. Those that want to see ads (or don't care either way) can see them, and those that don't want to see them don't have to (AdBlock). What's the problem? This is not a big issue in my opinion.

Re:Lack of ads counts most?

[BluhDeBluh]

Text ads are difficult to Adblock - you can Greasemonkey them, but it's hassle. On top of that, the ones on ask.com seem to be very annoying - a long list that takes half the page, so they are very difficult to ignore. I prefer Google's less prominent ones.

Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ???

[greenhollow]

This is the same as trusting the newspapers, tv sound bytes and what celebrities say. You cannot make serious decisions about anything unless you do in depth research and take all sides into consideration.

I call this "thinking". I do no think it is exclusive to any generation.

What about punctuation?

[corsec67]

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)

"how many fingers does a human being have?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask.com's first result is a webpage on How many fingers can you fit into your ass?. Now that's useful... ;)

Deceptive article...

[cswiger2005]

quick facts from Wikipedia on the search page, and, (what counts most) fewer ads than any of the rivals

This is obviously untrue-- there are zero ads on Wikipedia, which seems to be where ask.com has lifted much of the content only to wrap it in paid-for-placement ad banners. Do a search on ask.com and you'll get the top-3 sponsored paid ad links first, then the top-ten actual search results, and then another 5 sponsored paid ad links. By my count, about forty percent of the links ask.com shows you when you search are ad links.

Next, we could consider the author, who isn't identified by name or email address, but by a link to a freshly registered domain that's just over two weeks old:

Registrant:
Digital Media Ventures LLC
701 First Ave
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
US

Domain name: PLASMA-HDTV-PRICES.COM

Administrative Contact:
Alexander Moskalyuk, - alex@moskalyuk.com
701 First Ave
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
US
4083492977 Fax: 4083492977

Technical Contact:
Alexander Moskalyuk, - alex@moskalyuk.com
701 First Ave
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
US
4083492977 Fax: 4083492977

Record last updated on 19-May-2006.
Record expires on 13-May-2007.
Record created on 13-May-2006.

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.DREAMHOST.COM 66.33.206.206
NS2.DREAMHOST.COM 66.201.54.66

View the "page info" and take a look at the links, this seems to be nothing more than an article by a shill who is getting paid to promote products and/or do market research on people who read Slashdot.

Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?!

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

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.)

Re:Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?!

[joeykiller]

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.