What s Ahead for Ask com

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What's Ahead For Ask.com?

By: Jordan McCollum
2007-05-23

I guess we're all getting a little tired of writing about Google. Ask has been on the forefront of more than one person's mind lately.

Jennifer Laycock asks whether Ask is On Fire, or Going Down in Flames? Good question. She points to Nielsen//NetRatings' April results which show Google's market share at 55.2%, up 48% over last year-and Ask's market share at 1.8% and actually down 2.3% (or down half a percentage point) from last year.

Josh Catone on Read/WriteWeb asks whether Ask's future should be search (riffing on Allen Stern of CenterNetwork's plan to get Ask.com back on track). Josh suggests that they should focus on their advertising products instead. It's not a bad idea.

After all, Google seems to be redesigning its self-image to portray itself as an advertising platform. Even if "Search, Ads and Apps" was bogus, in April Eric Schmidt told Wired to "Think of [Google] first as an advertising system. Then as an end-user system - Google Apps. A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. . . ." Should Ask.com follow suit?

Meanwhile, we're starting to see the touted $100 million dollar Crispin Porter + Bogusky television commercials. So far, they're not as bad as the plastic-headed king or zombie Orville Redenbacher (or any of the other ubermacho CPB stuff), but they're not remarkable, either. Many people have pointed out that all the references to the algorithm are going to go over people's heads (and if they don't, many people won't associate 'the algorithm' with Ask since many people opine that Google's algorithm is still superior).

Haven't seen them? Here's one on YouTube (thanks for pointing me to the right place, MonkeySEO).

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About the Author:
Jordan McCollum is a staff writer for the popular marketing blog Marketing Pilgrim. She has worked in search engine optimization with clients including 3M, Little Giant Ladders and ADP. After graduating from Brigham Young University, Jordan joined the SEO copywriting team at the Internet marketing firm 10x Marketing. After 10x closed its doors in December 2006, Jordan became a freelance writer and Internet marketing consultant specializing in SEO. She also has extensive experience with web analytics, conversion rate enhancement and e-mail marketing.


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