Search Results for: \"ask.com\"

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Is Ask.com Out of the Search Engine Race?

posted on June 17, 2009

I hate to say this, but does anyone still care about Ask.com?

I say this as someone that once loved Ask.com, but–having watched it change ownership and leadership–now feels like its best days are behind it.

Of course, I’m just one person and enough people still use Ask.com that the search engine has unveiled a database of 300 million Q&A pairs for searchers in the US and UK.

The result is a Q&A database that is fine-tuned to give consumers the best answer, the first time, every time through streamlined, localized, concise results to their questions. For example, the question "How do I train a puppy?" yields in-depth answers with step-by-step instructions from a series of diverse and authoritative sources across the web – giving Ask.com searchers a selection of options and resources they can use to take action. Ask.com’s unique Q&A results also are injected and blended into standard web search results pages.

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Ask.com Ads: Confirmed as Creepy

posted on August 7, 2007

You already know that Ask.com’s latest round of “I got what I was looking for” TV commercials are not what I was looking for. But I’m not the only one. In today’s Ad Report Card column on Slate, “Ads we hate,” featured the ad that I hate. First, a sample of the hate mail for Ask.com’s campaign:

In the new TV ads for the search engine Ask.com, a man (along with a chorus of women) sings that “he found just what he was looking for.” What he was looking for turns out to be “chicks with swords.” While it’s vaguely disturbing that Ask.com is celebrating in song that this guy successfully found masturbatory material online, I am truly creeped out by his smile a few seconds into the song. It looks like his search on Ask.com would actually be “how to cook and eat chicks with swords.”
—M.M.

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Ask.com‘s Jim Lanzone Reveals Plans for Search Engine’s Future

posted on January 10, 2007

ZDNet’s Donna Bogatin has an interesting interview up with Ask.com CEO, Jim Lanzone. She asks some probing questions, and Jim shares some interesting morsels.

On switching users to the new AskX environment…

The AskX website is a testing ground for what the next generation of Ask.com could be. AskX.com is the sandbox area and slowly but surely will be migrated over to everyday Ask.com users starting at some point in this quarter, but we have a lot of testing to do still. AskX is the potential future interface of Ask.com or potential future experience for Ask.com.

On exploring paid search partners outside of Google…

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Ask.com‘s Answer to Why the Sky is Blue & Other Questions we Ask

posted on December 1, 2008

Want to know what we as a group think about, worry about, and are curious about? Ask.com gives insight by naming the top searches of the year. 2008 was a year of worries about gas prices and the economy. We sought out deals on vacations, used cars, and cheap apartments.

Ask.com, the 7th largest search engine in the US gets 70 million unique monthly searches, according to comScore Media Metrix (Oct. 2008). Last year we had different things on our minds, and the categories of queries has changed. Still, the #1 search last year for politicians during the primaries is now president elect Barack Obama.

The famous celebrity moms who captured our attention was a pregnant Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba, a young and pregnant Jamie Lynn Spears, and a perky politician most of us hadn’t heard of until this year: Sarah Palin.

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Ask.com Grows Audience by 11% Overnight!

posted on May 15, 2008

Here’s a riddle for you. How many employees does it take to grow Ask.com’s audience by 11%?

Answer: Apparently just 20.

It’s no joke! Ask.com has just announced it will acquire Lexico, owners of Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, in a move that will increase its audience by a whopping 11%.

Lexico has just 20 employees!

No financial terms have been released, but seeing as Lexico had been in talks with Answers.com for $100 million–the deal fell through last year–we suspect it to be in the same price range.

So, what are the integration plans?

Once the deal closes, likely in the third quarter, [IAC Chief Executive Jim] Safka expects Ask.com to quickly add new layers to the experience of Dictionary.com, such as its capacity to provide video clips and images alongside text entries. More than 30 percent of Ask.com searches today already fall within the reference category.

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Barry Diller Ready to Stick a Fork in Ask.com?

posted on October 28, 2009

Barry Diller is getting close to waving his white flag in the search wars.

During IAC’s quarterly earnings conference call, the top dog made it quite clear that Ask.com may be on the chopping block:

"We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes," Diller said. "And, it is unlikely that we would be the consolidator."

While Diller cautioned "you cannot really make any absolutes" about deals, he acknowledged that Ask.com faced a challenging environment in a search business.

He may as well have hung up a "For Sale" sign on the Ask.com homepage!

You can’t really blame him. After many attempts to promote and revamp Ask.com, the search engine holds a tiny 4% market share and it’s only chance of moving from the #4 to #3 spot will be when Yahoo hands over search to Microsoft.

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Ask.com Expands Semantic Search Technology

posted on January 8, 2009

By Peter Young

Given the recent improvements announced by Google it should come as no surprise that another search engine has recently announced a raft of improvements to their search experience. This time it’s Ask.com who have announced a number of advances to their semantic search technology.

With semantic search one of the key search battlegrounds over the next couple of years, Ask introduced a couple of new semantic technologies namely DADS(SM) (Direct Answers from Databases), DAFS(SM) (Direct Answers from Search), and AnswerFarm(SM) aimed at breaking new ground in the areas of semantic, web text and answer farm search back in October 2008.

According to Erik Collier, vice president of product management at Ask, the Ask technology is unique because it enables web surfers to type real questions, instead of a series of keywords. When interviewed by TechNewsWorld back in June 2008, he went on to say