Traffic Flow SEO

Ask has always struggled to get more marketshare. First they ditched their trusty mascot, Jeeves (retiring him in 2006). Then they moved into Ask 3D (early universal search - way ahead of the competition) which was incredible for the time. During that time they ran ads that ranged from chimps using the engine (maybe a bad association of its users) saying it was very simple, to a short run campaign called, "Its the Algorithm" which I think very few people really understood to crazy ads that covered equally crazy subjects. Below are a few of my favorites for your enjoyment:





Rescent research (via comsScore) has shown that people really still think of Ask as the engine you go to, to ask questions. Well it appears what is old is new again. Ask.com (as of today) is going to focus on this audience and have recently updated their site to reflect that (US - October 6 / UK October 20) change. While I think that may be a great idea, what I am saddened to see is their abandonment of many things I liked about Ask. I really enjoyed their Ask 3D search results as I thought they were much more advanced than any universal search results coming from any other engine. Below is a commercial that really shows those advanced search results (as they are no longer on the site):



What I am seeing now is still a good search engine, but with the focus now on answering questions the search results are starting reflect that and look more and more like Google results (integrating the universal search results within results, not next to them). What they lose here are the users who really enjoyed that benefit. They could have included their new Q/A results next to their search results without losing most of what Ask 3D included and held on to users like myself - just my 2 cents.

For more on what is new click here - Welcome to the New Ask.com