John Battelle has on his blog a post where Ask CEO answers his questions about AskCity. Ask's CEO explained AskCity is a new local application from Ask.com which can be found in one of two ways: through the AskCity link on the homepage, or at the top of standard results page in response to your local queries. "AskCity users won't have to bounce around to multiple sites in order to find, and take action with local information. In short, we get you from Point A to Point B faster."
Ask
Ask.com is here with its new product – Ask City . the new product replaces Ask Local which had certain limitations. The new Ask City presents data and content from various IAC sites and third-party sources, like Citysearch, Yelp, Ticketmaster, Evite, InsiderPages, as well as number of other sites. The four content areas are: Business listings, Events, Movies and Maps & Directions.
Securities and Exchange Commission have started charging various Websites for showing real-time stock quotes. But the charging of quote fee is not acceptable to the Internet firms. According to Washington Post some of the leading firms like Google Inc. IAC, and Yahoo Inc. have joined hands for petitioning SEC for waving the fee. The firms in a month have been charged from $1 to $75 per user.
Revenues of Ask.com have increased by 62% . This came to the forefront after IAC disclosed their Q3 earning results in a report. Ask.com comes under IAC Search & Media. Sales in media and advertising department have increased to $135.5 million while operating loss was recorded at $2.1 million. Ask Jeeves Inc. search site was bought by IAC in 2005 for $1.96 billion. According to comScore Networks, Ask.com has 5.8% of market after Google Inc. which has 45% of market. Among the search engines Ask.com is ranked fourth. IAC is spending more money for making the site more popular.
Search 'Raccoon' at Google and AdWords will bring up an ad from Ask.com. This is because Ask.com takes up an impressive approach of using paid search on Google, to promote the search engine.
The ad says, "Use the New Ask.com to find it. Save time. Search better." On clicking the ad you will reach Smart Answer result at Ask.com.
Ask.com has lately launched a mobile search product at m.ask.com or mobile.ask.com. Ask Mobile is seems to be the only good option available for mobile devices. It makes use of Skweezer throughout so as to improve readability and download speed on your mobile device. Navigating Ask Mobile is esay and also a pleasure.
Good news seems to be overflowing from all sides. Firstly, Ask.com's program Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) has been upgraded, thereby improving management tools and making premium inventory available to paid search advertisers.
A scoop from MediaPost talks about Ask.com's plans to launch a new platform for their sponsored search. This upgrade is scheduled to take place in the of beginning this weekend. A recent thread at WebmasterWorld discussed a list of few new features including:
- Improvements in cost and budget control
- New ad structure improves content management
- Streamlined UI simplifies common tasks
- More flexible reporting
Ask.com has added a new feature in their Search Engine Result Pages. It's blog search. With more than a thousand entries, it's certainly going to corner a significant share of the market. In fact, Ask.com is the only search engine besides Google to record an increase in market share over the last 6 months. Good days for Ask.
The world cup fever has caught on to a few top search engines in the world. While Google has added some World Cup ’short cuts’ to their search engine results pages, Ask.com offers expanded coverage with the ability to track specific teams. Yahoo! offers deep coverage with Yahoo Sports and as well as a partnered site with FIFA, FIFAWorldCup.com. This site offers Video Highlights, Fantasy Games, and mobile downloads of World Cup info and media.
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