» Ask.com Jumps 20%? Woo-Hoo! Search Engine Optimization Journal

Ask.com Jumps 20%? Woo-Hoo!

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 22 of February , 2008 at 9:36 am

Marketing Pilgrim is bragging about Ask.com again.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Ask, but 20% of 3.something isn’t much. I remember when it was a big deal that Ask jumped from fifth place to fourth in search volume (last year). Apparently, they’re back in fifth and have been for some time. Even AOL, which is an aggregator, not a search engine, is ahead of them.

That’s not to say that Ask won’t ever move beyond the 4% of the market range. It’s just not where they are now. Yes, they had the biggest jump (in percentage) among all the search engines, but how many search queries would Google have to have to increase its search volume by 20%? When you consider that, 20% just doesn’t seem like much, does it? At 7.7 billion searches in January, Google would increase its search volume by more than Ask’s total search volume even if it grew only by 10%. If Yahoo! increased its volume by 20% then it would grow at a rate equal to Ask’s total volume. Does that put it a little bit into perspective?

None of this means that Ask isn’t doing things right. Having come awfully late to the search game, Ask is outstripping all the other search engines in a couple of areas, one of which is universal search. It’s local listings seem to be a big improvement over the other search engines as well. And I really do like its new social news site, BigNews. One could easily criticize them for not allowing users to submit stories, but there are already so many news sites that allow users to submit stories that we just don’t need another one.

20%? OK, wonderful. Let me know when they’ve grown by 5% and that’s enough to move up into third place. Keep struggling Ask. I’m behind you 100%.

Category: Search Engines

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2 Comments

Made Saturday, 23 of February , 2008 at 12:22 pm

I think that ask will not rise unless it does 2 things:
1. Redesign SERPS UID and
2. Start focusing on search as a global fact.

I think the SERPS page should have a better defined color that separates PAID ADS from the SERS. The way that ASK has designed this, makes me feel that it is trying to make users click on the paid adds. And why should I have to scroll past PAID ADS at the bottom of the page, to go to the next page. So a question arises. If ASK is trying to make users click on the PAID ADS, doesn’t that mean that it is trying in some way to affect the results? Not in a direct way (tweaking results) but in a sneaky way. It is trying to make users click by a mistake on a PAID AD. Another question arises. If users click on a PAID AD by a mistake, thinking that it is a SER, but lands on a site that doesn’t provide what that user was really looking for (PAID ADS are sometimes not as valid as a page in the SERPS), hasn’t ASK tricked its client (the company or person paying the clicks) into a bad click? For these reasons I don’t feel I can trust ASK. If I feel I can’t trust ASK, then why should I use it?

The other thing is that I find that even though the PAID ADS are localized mostly (Because they are Google Ads!!!), the SERs aren’t! I live and work in Greece. ASK is useless for me! So why should I use ASK if when I write “PIZZA HUT” I get US Pizza Hut places?!?! What do I need a Pizza Hut Place in the US for?!?! If I write the same words in Google, I get the GREEK Pizza Hut main page. So for me, ASK isn’t what I need and this is why I believe it will never do better in the Search Engine Wars! BTW, even LIVE does a good local search!

I could write more and more, but if ASK needs more advice, they can hire me to help them out!

Cheers!

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Saturday, 23 of February , 2008 at 4:16 pm

Thanks for the analysis, Spyros. It is true that all of the search engines have regional strengths and weaknesses. Yahoo doesn’t do well at all in the UK, but I think Ask does. There must be something about the localized algorithms at each of the search engines that allow them to do well in certain places or prevent them from doing well in others.