Traffic Flow SEO

Wow, what a month for Ask.com!

First they merge with Old Navy, well not exactly, but their new 'Ask Deals' ads appear a bit Old Navy'ish' and they are now all about savings, much like Old Navy. Check out the ad below and make your own assessment...:-)



Next up, Ask decides to update it's blog - kind of. If you look at all the blog posts over the last 6 months there are a total of ten posts and probably only one of them is not self promotional (see July 15 post). Below is a list of all of them in case you care:

October 20, 2009
Ask Is 'Dancing on Air': “Who Wants a Deal? We Do, We Do!”

October 13, 2009
Get Smarter on the Go with Dictionary.com’s Free Dictionary & Thesaurus Application for BlackBerry

October 06, 2009
Ask Deals: Your One-Click, One-Stop Shop for Savings is Here!

October 01, 2009
Ask.com Celebrates the 25th National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

September 14, 2009
Searching for a Cure: Ask.com and Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Partner in the Fight to End Breast Cancer

August 05, 2009
SES San Jose is here! August 10-14, 2009

July 15, 2009
What makes a search engine “semantic”?

July 14, 2009
Thanks, iPhoners! Dictionary.com Makes Apple’s List of 30 Favorite Apps

June 17, 2009
Harvesting the Best Answers from Ask.com’s AnswerFarms!

May 19, 2009
Thanks for Asking! Ask.com is a Webware 100 Award Winner Three Years Running

Ask Blog Link for Reference

Basically why even have a blog if you are only going to use it to praise yourself? Also, if you are going to have Blog Roll why not remove sites that have not been active for over 2 and half years like - ThreadWatch?

I think it is pretty embarrassing and if Ask wants to be considered a player in the search space they need to be a bit less self promotional and more informational and helpful to the search community.Maybe just my opinion, but when was the last time you saw Ask.com really increase it's search market share?

Finally, Ask decides to name a new president. I guess if you current one is not doing a good job why not promote someone within the company who is successful? Why not, it only makes sense. So welcome to Doug Leeds who has been with Ask Networks since early 2006, where he has held several different positions. Most recently, he has been President of the company's Dictionary.com and Chief Operating officer of Ask Networks. Now as President, he will oversee the US business for Ask.com and lead the development, launch, and execution of Ask's strategy in the U.S.

That is about it, except in in effort to help Ask.com become a better more poweerful search engine I have decided to provide a grossly text rich backlink to their search engine:

The Best Search Engine In the World, Better Than Google, Yahoo or Bing!!!!!

Good luck, Ask!