The search engine wars are heating up this summer! Ask.com has played the "also ran" in fourth place in overall internet searches behind Yahoo, Microsoft, and the goliath of Google. Microsoft just bought Yahoo and many industry insiders feel this merger will have the same disastrous consequences as the heralded merger of AOL and Time Warner a few years ago. The question is can the cultures of a software company who struggled with media, take over a large media company and mesh the cultures and make it successful? While this merger is finalized, Ask.com has stayed the course and is launching a new algorithm which it thinks will improve search results for users. A massive advertising campaign is heating up and TV commercials are being launched nationwide to generate a buzz about their new improved service.
In the Thursday May 3, 2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Jessica Vascellaro and Lauren Tara LaCapra highlight the campaign by Ask.com to generate a grassroots buzz about the new service. "Algorithm is a funny word that people don't hear every day" said Jim Lanzone, Chief Executive of Ask.com. This phase of the campaign won't go into details about how the algorithm works he said. "The point is to introduce technology in a non-technical way."
I could not agree more. I don't need to know how it works, I just want good results from the searches I do daily. It will be interesting to see the big three search engines do battle over the summer and see if Ask.com can take much needed market share away from Google and Microsoft with their new algorithm and marketing campaign.
Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think about Ask.com and how it compares to the others. I must admit I have been a loyal Google user but I am very interested to see how Ask.com measures up.
I have used 'Ask.com' in the past, but I have been an avid 'Google' user as well. The layout and design of their site is clean and easy to use. The particular search that I conducted on ‘Ask.com’ netted great results via their search engine. I noticed that there was less 'garbage' in terms of content that was pulled in compared to other sites such as 'Yahoo & Google.' I feel that is an added plus as you have more credible sites to sift through versus wasting time navigating through useless sites that may be pulled up by other search engines. I will be sure to bookmark this site…thanks for pointing me there!
Posted by: Lachlan D | May 18, 2007 at 04:59 PM