WebProNews

Tag: Ask

  • Ask.com Acquires Ask.fm For More Asking

    Ask.com announced that it has acquired Ask.fm, a social Q&A service, which has over 180 million global monthly users, according to the company.

    Ask.fm is available on the web, and for Android and IOS.

    A post on the Ask blog says:

    Ask.com has been in the business of finding answering to questions from millions of people over the course of our 18 years, and we are proud that as a result we’ve built our brand to become synonymous with Q&A online. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that as Ask.fm started gaining increasingly significant traction over the past 18 months, we became concerned about the potential to confuse users. Accordingly, we considered, even pursued, several different courses of action; but all the while, becoming much more familiar with the product and its various use cases.

    What we discovered was an incredibly engaged community, one growing growing rapidly all over the globe. Today, after just a few years in business, Ask.fm has an astounding 180 million users who are asking 20,000 questions per minute and making 670 posts every second – this puts Ask.fm on par with some of the biggest, most well-known social networks in the world.

    What also was, and has been, abundantly clear, is that the need to materially enhance safety on the Ask.fm site is paramount – critical, really, to unlocking the service’s true potential. And the good news, is we’ve already started the process of making changes on the safety front, on day one of acquisition. – See more at: http://blog.ask.com/#sthash.tKjrF3ZH.dpuf

    The company is putting in place a new leadership team aimed at instilling a “safety-first” philosophy. lya and Mark Terebin from Ask.fm will no longer be involved in the operations or ownership structure of the company, Ask says. They’ve hired Chief Trust and Safety Officer Catherine Teitelbaum, formerly Director of Safety at Yahoo, to “drive global Ask.fm trust and safety initiatives.”

    More on safety-related efforts in the blog post.

    Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

    A couple years ago, Ask acquired About.com, another popular site providing answers to many of the world’s questions. The price on that one was $300 million

    Image via Ask.fm

  • FTC Updates Search Engine Ad Disclosure Guidelines

    The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has updated is guidance to the search engine industry regarding the need to distinguish between advertisements and search results.

    Search industry veteran Danny Sullivan wrote a letter to the FTC just over a year ago calling upon the commission to scrutinize Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, Nextag, Twenga and TripAdvisor, with regards to the disclosure of paid listings. It’s unclear whether today’s update comes as a result of Sullivan’s letter, but it seems pretty likely.

    The FTC has sent letters to search engine companies noting that in recent years, paid search results have “become less distinguishable as advertising”. The commission said in an announcement:

    The letters are the latest example of the FTC’s work to update its guidance for digital advertisers, which also includes recent updates to the Dot Com Disclosures and Endorsements and Testimonials Guides. The letters also respond to requests from industry and consumer organizations to update the 2002 guidance.

    According to both the FTC staff’s original search engine guidance and the updated guidance, failing to clearly and prominently distinguish advertising from natural search results could be a deceptive practice. The updated guidance emphasizes the need for visual cues, labels, or other techniques to effectively distinguish advertisements, in order to avoid misleading consumers, and it makes recommendations for ensuring that disclosures commonly used to identify advertising are noticeable and understandable to consumers.

    The letters note that the principles of the original guidance still apply, even as search and the business of search continue to evolve. The letters observe that social media, mobile apps, voice assistants on mobile devices, and specialized search results that are integrated into general search results offer consumers new ways of getting information. The guidance advises that regardless of the precise form that search takes now or in the future, paid search results and other forms of advertising should be clearly distinguishable from natural search results.

    The guidance has been directed at AOL, Ask, Bing, Blekko, DuckDuckGo, Google, Yahoo and seventeen other specialty search engines.

    You can see the actual letter here (pdf).

    [via Danny Sullivan]

  • September U.S. Search Market: Google Up, Microsoft Flat, Yahoo Down

    comScore has released its latest numbers for the U.S. search market. They show Google sites up 0.3% in September at 66.7%, followed by Microsoft sites at 15.9% and Yahoo sites at 12.2%. Ask came in at 3.5%, and AOL came in at 1.8%. Microsoft remained flat from month to month, while Yahoo dropped by .6%.

    “More than 16.3 billion explicit core searches were conducted in September, with Google Sites ranking first with 10.9 billion,” reports comScore. “Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.6 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2 billion, Ask Network with 565 million (up 3 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 287 million.”

    “In September, 69.4 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (up 0.6 percentage points), while 25.1 percent of searches were powered by Bing,” the firm notes.

    Here are the usual charts:

    comScore search market in U.S.

    comScore search market

    In August, Bing had gained market share and Google had lost a bit.

  • Ask.com Acquires About.com For $300 Million

    Ask.com Acquires About.com For $300 Million

    IAC announced that its Ask.com property has agreed to acquire The About Group from The New York Times for $300 million. The About Group, of course, is the company behind About.com. The deal was signed on Sunday.

    “The About.com acquisition is completely in line with IAC’s M&A strategy of acquiring, at disciplined valuations, companies that are complementary and synergistic with both our existing businesses and our areas of expertise,” said IAC CEO Greg Blatt. “We are extremely excited to bring these two businesses together; About.com’s content will differentiate and greatly increase the authority of Ask.com’s offerings, while Ask’s expertise in search technology and user experience will improve the discoverability of existing content on About.com.”

    “The complementary nature of these two businesses will provide significant synergies going forward, and thus we expect that About.com will generate more profit as a part of Ask.com and IAC than it has been able to over the last few years,” added Blatt.

    This could also be another way for Ask to get more content in front of Google users, as About.com content is often returned on the first page of results.

    The About Group will join IAC’s Search And Applications reporting segment, where it will reside with Ask.com, Dictionary.com, Mindspark, Pronto and nRelate, which it acquired last month.

    “This is a rare merger with true bilateral synergies,” said Joey Levin, CEO of IAC Search & Applications. “On the one hand, the Ask.com search and content business has generated exceptional revenue and profit growth by marketing and distributing a quality consumer search and Q&A experience, and About provides Ask with a tremendous amount of quality content to further enhance that experience and the credibility of the Ask brand.”

    “On the other hand, About.com has created, and today continues to grow, a library of content which consumers love across a vast array of categories, and we can now market and distribute that content and the About brand through Ask and significantly increase traffic and profitability at About,” added Levin.

    About CEO Darline Jean will report to Ask.com CEO Doug Leeds.

  • Ask Looks To Spread Its Q&A To 30,000 Publishers With nRelate Acquisition

    Ask.com has acquired content recommendation company nRelate for an undisclosed sum. nRelate is a service that serves up related article content on publishers’ pages in a box, similar to the one pictured. There is also an ad component, which enables publishers to get some money through a revenue share model.

    “nRelate’s platform helps over 30k publishers (bloggers and other media) increase traffic through targeted article recommendations within content,” a representative for Ask tells WebProNews. “Ask will apply its technology and expertise in search-based content discovery to create new products and marketing opportunities for content owners.”

    According to Ask, nRelate’s platform has spurred 15% growth in impressions each month during the past year. With nRelate as part of Ask, the product will get answers from Ask’s Q&A platform integrated into the mix.

    “Ask.com has been successfully building its Q&A business, yielding record growth and profits, allowing us to witness, firsthand, how users’ appetites for browsing and discovering content is only growing,” said Ask CEO Doug Leeds. “In addition to enhancing reader engagement, nRelate represents a promising native monetization model for publishers. We’re also excited to provide a platform that enables content creators to expose top-notch content to new audiences.”

    “When it comes to content discovery products, publishers often get the short end of the stick with little control or customization,” said nRelate CEO Neil Mody, who will continue to run the product under Ask. “nRelate has been successful in part due to the flexibility of our products that allow publishers to design the product exactly how they want. The combination with Ask gives us access to new technologies and resources to fuel a wider range of products that both move the needle for publishers and improve the reader experience.”

    Ask’s Q&A platform attracts 65 million unique U.S. visitors per month, according to the company. This acquisition should give Ask a nice shot at increasing those numbers.

  • Google Obviously Powers Ask.com’s Paid And Organic Search Results

    Not that this will necessarily come as a surprise to you, but it seems pretty obvious that Google is powering Ask’s organic search results. Ask has an open partnership with Google for its sponsored search results, but will not come right out and say who is powering its regular results.

    I’m not sure that there was much doubt it was Google anyway, but after looking at Google’s results for “viagra” in light of its Penguin update, and comparing them to the results on other search engines, Ask’s SERP for the query was nearly identical, down to the specific flaws we pointed out about Google’s version. Google has corrected some of these flaws, and those same ones appear to have been corrected on Ask’s version as well.

    A spokesperson for Ask told us, “A third-party partner powers core web search on Ask.com, but that information is not public for contractual reasons.”

    “Ask’s search technology is focused on surfacing answers to questions rather than links, and it’s powered by a combination of technologies,” she said. “A third party search engine supplies the raw search feeds and we build our own algorithms on top of that, designed specifically to locate and extract answers to questions.”

    Here’s what Ask says on its Editorial Guidelines page about its automated search results:

    Ask.com delivers its primary search results using it’s proprietary search technology. These search results appear under the heading “Web Results”. Ask.com search technology uses sophisticated algorithms and Subject-Specific PopularitySM data to generate the most relevant and authoritative results on the Web.

    Here’s what it says about its sponsored links:

    Results appearing under the heading “Sponsored Web Results” or “Sponsored Web Result” are provided by Google, a third party provider of pay for performance search listings. Google generates highly relevant sponsored results by allowing advertisers to bid for placement in this area based on relevant keywords. These results, which are powered by Google’s advanced algorithms, are then distributed across the Internet to some of the world’s most popular and well-known Web sites, including Ask.

    Here’s a screen cap of the “viagra” results before they were fixed:

    null

    You can just compare the results to the ones I talked about in this article and see the obvious similarities (which were not all duplicated on the other search engines).

    By the way, if you ask Ask.com, “Does Google power Ask.com’s search results?” the top two results are articles that suggest that Google may power Ask.com’s search results. Of course, they also happen to be the same results Google gives you when you ask the same question in a Google query.

    If you’re counting Bing and Yahoo together in those search market reports, you might as well be counting Google and Ask together as well. And AOL, of course.

  • Ask PollRoll App Aims To Help Users Navigate Through SXSW

    Ask has debuted a new mobile app at SXSW, which a company spokesperson tells WebProNews “combines the instant gratification of a poll with the answer depth and social context of a Q&A service.”

    “The app will help users in Austin cut through the noise to determine what the best panels, restaurants and parties are and will also help shape how Ask continues to integrate polling functionality into their site after Southby is over,” she says.

    Features include (as described in an email from the company):

  • Visual polling: Snap a picture and create a poll or browse and engage with high quality, editorially curated polls
  • Get context: Access comments to understand why respondents voted how they did
  • Discover and share: View responses from friends or those in a specific location or browse by recency or popularity

    • “Polling is one of the most engaging and straightforward Q&A formats on the Web – in fact, users in the Ask.com Q&A community continue to leverage the service as a polling mechanism,” says CEODoug Leeds. “SXSW is the perfect testing ground for us to play with mobile polling functionality, including filters like social connections and location, ultimately shaping how these features are integrated across both our flagship mobile app and site.”

    We spoke with Ask at SXSW last year as well, when they launched their location-based Q&A app:

    The new PollRoll app lets users send polls to friends and people nearby. It’s currently available in Apple’s iTunes Store. It’s only for iOS (i4.0 or higher).

    PollRoll from Ask

  • Exclusive: Ask Aims To Make Q&A More Social

    Exclusive: Ask Aims To Make Q&A More Social

    Earlier this year Ask.com opened up its community portion of the site to its entire user base. This gave users the ability to ask questions and get answers from people. Since then, the company has been re-tooling its site looking for ways to get users more engaged.

    “As we’ve all seen, Q&A sites are growing in popularity and there’s a reason for it; people are inherently curious AND want to share their expertise and answers/opinions,” Ask CTO Lisa Kavanaugh tells WebProNews. “By seeing how our 60 million users are interacting on Ask.com, people really do want to help others out by sharing their own knowledge and opinions on topics they care about.”

    Ask is rolling out a new feature on its Category pages – the top categories of questions people ask on the site. Categories include: Arts, Cars & Transportation, Entertainment, Food & Drink, Politics & Government, Science, Sports & Recreation, Technology, etc. Ask will place the most asked and answered questions front and center.

    Ask believes this will drive the community to become more social (answering, commenting and asking more questions). The Category pages themselves, Ask says, are designed to create appealing destinations people return to often.

    “These pages have been reorganized to create a compelling destination for Ask.com users that are passionate about certain topics, prompting them to ask more questions, and compelling them to answer more meaningfully,” the company tells us. “These pages are more visually appealing and engaging because they’re showing what excites people most by pushing the most popular content front and center.”

    “Ask.com is always studying and analyzing user behavior in the community and we proactively made this change,” a spokesperson says. “We’re exploring several new techniques to help keep users engaged on the site even longer and to keep Ask as their go-to destination when it comes to getting answers to their questions. We believe this change will help increase engagement on the category pages and increase content contribution in each category.”

    Users will still be able to view recently asked questions, and can see them by scrolling down on each Category Page.

    Ask says it gets twice as many visits from people who pose questions to each other, as opposed to the search box. That’s pretty obvious if you think about it. They’re going to return to see the answers. 60 million users is a lot of people. Keeping them coming back and finding a way to keep them engaged is key.

  • Top Searches & Questions of 2011 (According to ASK & AOL)

    Earlier this week, we looked at Bing’s year-end round-up (be it a little early) of the top searches of 2011. And the lists continue as today both AOL and Ask released their versions.

    Ask’s fittingly come in the form of the top questions. They were also thoughtful enough to include a video about them.

    “Because people come to Ask with specific questions we are uniquely able to understand what’s on consumers’ minds at any given moment, be it pop culture or politics,” said Doug Leeds, CEO, Ask.com. “For the first time, we’re looking at the year’s top questions to not only reflect on 2011, but also predict the newsmakers of 2012.”

    Ask’s top celebrity search terms and questions for 2011 include:

    1. Kim Kardashian: Was Kim Kardashian’s wedding fake?
    2. Justin Bieber: Is Justin Bieber going to be a dad?
    3. Lady Gaga: AreLady Gaga’s face implants real?
    4. Beyonce: Did Beyonce fake a baby bump?
    5. Kate Middleton: Who made Kate Middleton’s wedding dress?
    6. Ashton Kutcher: Did Ashton cheat?
    7. Michael Jackson: Was Michael Jackson murdered?
    8. Selena Gomez: Is Selena Gomez pregnant?
    9. Lindsay Lohan: Is Lindsay Lohan going to jail?
    10. Charlie Sheen: What happened to Charlie Sheen’s teeth?

    Top news search terms and questions included:

    1. Earthquake in Japan: How big was the earthquake in Japan?
    2. Hurricane Irene: What caused Hurricane Irene?
    3. Steve Jobs: How much was Steve Jobs worth?
    4. Royal Wedding: What did William whisper to Kate on the balcony?
    5. Occupy Wall Street: Who started Occupy Wall Street?
    6. iPhone: When will Apple release the iPhone 5?
    7. Osama Bin Laden: Who killed Bin Laden?
    8. Casey Anthony: Where is Casey Anthony hiding?
    9. 10th Anniversary of September 11: What is happening on the 10th anniversary of 9/11?
    10. AmyWinehouse: How did Amy Winehouse die?

    Top political searches and questions included:

    1. Barack Obama: Will Obama get re-elected?
    2. Mitt Romney: What is Mitt Romney’s religion?
    3. Sarah Palin: Is Sarah Palin running for president?
    4. Michele Bachmann: Is Michele Bachmann crazy?
    5. Anthony Weiner: Where can I find Anthony Weiner’s Twitter pics?
    6. Arnold Schwarzenegger: Who was Arnold’s mistress?
    7. Gay Marriage: Which states allow gay marriage?
    8. Withdrawl from Iraq: When will the troops come home?
    9. Iowa Caucus: When is the Iowa caucus?
    10. Muammar Ghadafi: Who will lead Libya after Ghadafi?

    Ask’s 2012 predictions list is as follows:

    1. George Clooney wins his second AND third Academy Award
    2. Dr. Oz surpasses Dr. Phil in ratings in a post-Oprah world
    3. Green Bay Packers wins Super Bowl second year in a row
    4. McDonald’s adds the McRib to its permanent menu
    5. New York reclaims its spot as top the US travel destination from 2011 leader Orlando
    6. Breakout star of 2011, Nicki Minaj, leapfrogs pop icon Katy Perry in album sales
    7. Pippa jumps onto the list of top ten baby names of the year
    8. Facebook goes public with world’s largest IPO
    9. Tiger Woods retires from golf
    And, finally…will the world end in 2012?

    10. Spoiler alert! IT WON’T

    And now on to the AOL side of things.

    “AOL is one of the starting points for conversations on the Web and this year’s search results reflect that,” said Francis Lobo, Senior Vice President, AOL Search. “Using our data and insights tools, we captured the pulse of the 2011 online dialogue – from Casey Anthony and Charlie Sheen, to Ted Williams and Lady Gaga, our search results reveal the news, entertainment and pop culture memes that captivated consumers this year.”

    News

    1. Casey Anthony Trial
    2. Gabrielle Giffords Shooting
    3. Royal Wedding
    4. Japan Earthquake
    5. Arab Spring
    6. Penn State Scandal
    7. Osama bin Laden Death
    8. Occupy Wall Street
    9. Debt Ceiling Debate
    10. European Debt Crisis

    Celebrities

    1. Charlie Sheen
    2. Justin Bieber
    3. Kate Middleton
    4. Jennifer Aniston
    5. Kim Kardashian
    6. Tiger Woods
    7. Lindsay Lohan
    8. Amy Winehouse
    9. Glenn Beck
    10. Pippa Middleton

    Memes

    1. Ted Williams
    2. Planking
    3. Serene Branson
    4. Anonymous
    5. My Little Pony
    6. Ancient Aliens
    7. Nyan Cat
    8. Rebecca Black Friday
    9. Tiger Mom
    10. Qwikster

    Presidential Candidates

    1. Barack Obama
    2. Herman Cain
    3. Michele Bachmann
    4. Rick Perry
    5. Ron Paul
    6. Mitt Romney
    7. Newt Gingrich
    8. Rick Santorum
    9. Jon Huntsman
    10. Gary Johnson

    “How…”

    1. How can I pay off my credit card?
    2. How tall is Katy Perry?
    3. How can I stop snoring?
    4. How did Valentine’s Day start?
    5. How do you lock your scroll bar?
    6. How much is my jewelry worth?
    7. How many ounces in a gallon?
    8. How do I change my AOL password?
    9. How much should I weigh?
    10. How did Punxsutawney Phil get his name?

    “Is…”

    1. Is Whitney Houston pregnant?
    2. Is the iPhone 3GS free?
    3. Is Dolly Parton her real name?
    4. Is Cancun safe for tourists?
    5. Is Roseanne Barr a nut farmer?
    6. Is heartburn a sign of pregnancy?
    7. Is shingles contagious?
    8. Is Facebook going to charge?
    9. Is there life after death?
    10. Is rosemary good for stretch marks?

    “Why…”

    1. Why did Dick leave Big Brother?
    2. Why did the original Becky leave Roseanne?
    3. Why did William and Kate split in 2007?
    4. Why did Paul Ryan found the Young Guns program?
    5. Why did the chicken cross the road?
    6. Why did Glenn Beck leave Fox?
    7. Why did Ricky Gervais quit Twitter?
    8. Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
    9. Why did my hair thin after giving birth?
    10. Why did Jerry Lewis leave MDA?

  • Old School Search Engines: Where Are They Now?

    Old School Search Engines: Where Are They Now?

    We thought it would be fun to take a walk down search engine memory lane and look at what some of the search engines from the times before Google’s domination are up to these days. Remember the days when the search industry wasn’t dominated by Google or even the combination of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft?

    I’m going to look at results for the same query across each one just as a comparison. I’ll use the classic “level 4 brain cancer” query that we’ve looked at on Google various times throughout the content farm/Panda update discussion this year.

    We first used this example to show where non-authoritative information was being surfaced for important health-related queries in Google, prior to the launch of the Panda update.

    Ask Jeeves

    Ask Jeeves was founded in 1996, and eventually became Ask.com, although it’s still Ask Jeeves in the UK. While there was always an emphasis on Q&A, this is very much the case these days. Here’s what it looks like:

    Ask Jeeves

    The results:

    Ask Jeeves

    Alta Vista

    AltaVista was founded in 1995. Eventually it was purchased by Overture, which was taken over by Yahoo. Last year, Yahoo indicated that it would be shutting AltaVista down, but so far it is still live, delivering Yahoo results with an AltaVista logo. Here’s what it looks like:

    AltaVista

    The results:

    Altavista

    AlltheWeb

    AlltheWeb came out in 1999. It was eventually bought up by Overture, which was taken over by Yahoo. It was just earlier this year that Yahoo simply started directing it to search.yahoo.com.

    Excite

    Excite was founded in 1994. Ten years later it was acquired by Ask Jeeves. Now it’s owned by IAC, which also owns Ask. Here’s what it looks like today:

    Excite

    The results:

    Excite

    Lycos

    Lycos was founded in 1994. In 2000, it merged with Terra Networks to become Terra Lycos. In 2004, Lycos was sold to Daum Communications. In 2010, it was sold to Ybrant Digital. Here’s what it looks like these days:

    Lycos

    The results:

    Lycos

    HotBot

    HotBot was launched in 1996 by Wired Magazine, and is now owned by Lycos. Here’s what it looks like these days:

    Hotbot

    The results:

    hotbot

    Infoseek

    Infoseek was founded in 1994, and was eventually bought by The Walt Disney Company. It then was rolled into Go.com, but has been replaced by Yahoo’s search, which is interesting, considering that Yahoo’s search has been replaced by Bing. Here’s what it looks like:

    Infoseek

    The results (they simply redirect to Yahoo search results):

    Infoseek

    WebCrawler

    WebCrawler is a metasearch engine. It launched in 1994, was bought by AOL in 1995, and sold to Excite in 1997. Infospace acquired it in 2001. Currently its results pull from Google, Yahoo and Bing. This was actually my go to search engine before discovering Google. That seems so long ago. Here’s what it looks like today:

    WebCrawler

    The results:

    webcrawler

    DogPile

    DogPile is similar to WebCrawler, and is also now owned by Infospace. It was launched in 1996. Here’s what it looks like today:

    Dogpile

    The results:

    Dogpile

    Mamma.com

    Mamma.com, a metasearch engine, was launched in 1996. The company eventually purchased Copernic, and changed its name to Copernic Inc. In 2009, Copernic sold Mamma.com to Empresario.

    There’s currently a message on the Mamma.com saying that a new version is on the way. Here’s what it currently looks like:

    Mamma.com

    The Results:

    mamma

    The moral of the story: a lot of search engines think eHow has the best result for “level 4 brain cancer”. That includes Bing and Yahoo. Google is going with Harvard’s MGH Brain Tumor Center for its top result for the query. Blekko is going with Cancer.org. DuckDuckGo is going with medical-answers.org.

    When was the last time you used any of these old school search engines? Let us know in the comments.

  • Ask Redesign, Human-Powered Q&A Rolls Out to All Users

    Ask has 63 million users these days. That is one thing that stands out in the company’s latest announcement.

    The announcement itself is that Ask.com has launched its human-powered Q&A service “Ask People” to all of those users. This has only been available to a portion of them in limited beta until now.

    Ask has also launched a redesign to “deeply infuse user-generated answers across the site and within search results”

    “The redesign accelerates Ask.com’s transition from pure algorithmic Web search to a Q&A site and mobile service fueled by the ability to search the Web for answers or connect with other users for personal opinions,” the company says.

    “Ask’s approach to Q&A is unique – we embrace questions where we can deliver answers in milliseconds from content on the Web, but also deeply appreciate that crawlers can’t replace human experience,” said CEO Doug Leeds. “Our limited exposure beta period allowed us to learn where humans and search best intersect as mechanisms for getting credible answers to the millions of questions – fact-based or subjective – we receive each day. Today’s launch combines the best of these two worlds into a single, comprehensive Q&A destination.”

    Read our recent interview with Leeds here.

    The new Ask Q&A experience is a valuable from the web, as well as from iOS and Android. Last week, Ask launched its new Android app, following up its iPhone app which surpassed a million downloads.

  • Ask Android App Launches

    Ask has launched a new Android app offering a mobile Q&A service to users. The launch follows that of its iPhone app, which recently surpassed a million downloads.

    “We have placed a big bet on mobile as part of our growth strategy, and it’s paying off with four times the answer rate as our site users,” said Jason Rupp, senior director of product management at Ask.com. “Over the last three quarters there was triple digit growth in traffic from smartphones to the Ask.com mobile site, and 60 percent of that was Android. To win in mobile, you must win on Android.”

    That emphasis on mobile has become quite evident. Here’s an interview we did with the company at SXSW a few months back, discussing its Ask Around location-based Q&A app:

    Features of the new Android app include:

    • Voice to text: Simply ask questions, no typing required.
    • Web combined with real people: Get web results as well as top-voted published answers from other Ask.com users in milliseconds.
    • Send a question to a real user: Want another opinion? Route the question to a live person in the Ask.com Q&A community, or browse and respond to other users’ questions.
    • Set it and forget it: Push notifications alert you to when a new answer has arrived.
    • Personalize Q&A by interest: New for Android users, the app allows you to filter Q&A by topics that match your profile.
    • Follow feature: Follow users who provide interesting answers, and personalize your Q&A experience with content from these connections.

    Ask Android App

    Ask Android App

    Ask Android App

    Ask Android App

    Last week, Ask announced some new partnerships it is using to help bolster its “Smart Answers”.

  • Ask Adds Partners to Bolster “Smart Answers” for Q&A

    Ask has announced several major partnerships designed to fuel the company’s growing Q&A service. More specifically, the partnerships will drive expansion of Ask’s “smart answers” across more categories including: sports, recipes, travel and music.

    The point of the “smart answers” feature of Ask is to give users real answers, as opposed to links to web content – when applicable, and include an “exact answer” right at the top of the page. The product is still in limited beta.

    New partners include: Sports Network, Lonely Planet, Calorie Counter, IGN Entertainment and Lyrics.com.

    Ask IGN Answer

    Ask LonelyPlanet Answer

    “Ask.com is unique from other Q&A sites in that we have a real mechanism for scouring the Web for answers to questions, in addition to helping people connect with each other for information,” said Shane McGilloway, executive vice president of business operations at Ask.com. “With Ask.com Smart Answers, users do a search or ask a question and get a clear cut answer from a credible source in a fraction of a second – an approach that yields increased user satisfaction as well as frequency and retention. With the expansion of Smart Answers into these new, high volume categories, millions more people will experience this benefit.”

    “As one of the most established players in Q&A, Ask.com sees more questions than practically anyone, and with a growing number of them sports-related, this partnership makes perfect sense,” said Ken Zajac, director of sales for The Sports Network. “Smart Answers help people save time and effort, and make it possible for us to engage with millions of Ask users every day.”

    Ask says that to ensure quality, it generates Smart Answers from a select pool of content partners “carefully vetted based on criteria like authority, relevance and subject matter depth.” Ask then uses natural language processing to match exact answers to specific questions. The answer appear on Ask.com and in the Ask Mobile Q&A App.

    WebProNews discussed Ask’s efforts in mobile, location-based Q&A with the company at SXSW a few months ago:

    Ask says food, sports and health are among the most popular categories on its service.

    “The Q&A category is bigger than ever because no one has cracked this quite yet – and we are in an excellent position to do so given our approach and history with the consumer,” CEO Doug Leeds told WebProNews recently. “Also, you’ll see us continue to invest in mobile over the next five years, as Q&A behavior increasingly translates to mobile devices. We have a pretty aggressive mobile product roadmap. I’d like to see us as the dominant provider of mobile Q&A services a few years from now.”

  • Ask Taps YouTube API For Enhanced Video Results

    Online video continues to blow up, and a lot of startups are capitalizing on it. Ask says that as a Q&A site, it sees a larger percentage of “how to” questions around art, science, cooking and exercise that are “begging to be answered visually.” With that in mind, the company is taking what it says is a first step to making video a more integral part of its Q&A community.

    It is doing this by integrating Google’s YouTube API into the Ask.com user community. When a user includes a YouTube link in their answer to a question, the response will include a full thumbnail and metadata info, including playback for the video within the page (similar to Facebook’s display). Video will be infused across Ask’s Answer products and web results. Ask’s “Smart Answers” will now more heavily embed video, and overall results will enable full play back of video on the results page.

    David Amato, Director, Business Development at Ask tells WebProNews, “The API allows us to do a few things differently; most importantly, it will be easier for us to feature and scale video content across our site, both within user-generated answers and algorithmic responses. Currently we see around 1 million clicks a month go to YouTube to watch video; this will allow users the full video experience in the context of an answer to a question, right on the Ask.com site. And yes, this integration is a first step in laying the groundwork for richer video features down the road, such as the potential for users to record and upload their own video answers.”

    Ask Uses YouTube API

    Ask says the news is simply a first step of a “multi-pronged approach to integrate videos in various ways (that recording and uploading of video answers straight from mobile and desktop devices will come later this year).

    “Video is hugely important for our users, and it’s becoming more critical for our partners as well,” Amato tells us. “Partners in our Branded Q&A pilot program will be able to distribute any of their own video assets in response to relevant questions from our growing community. Our Smart Answer units will showcase video directly within the answer itself, enabling partners who supply content to these units to present users with more helpful detail.”

    When asked about mobile, he says, “These features are less relevant on mobile devices, most of which have the YouTube video player already embedded. That said, we will be adding video thumbnails to relevant answers in our iPhone app soon. We’ve also optimized video results in our recently launched smartphone-friendly site to include images that, once tapped, trigger the player to launch.”

    Last month, we had a conversation with Ask CEO Doug Leeds. We asked him where Ask will be in another 5 years, and he didn’t mention video, but he did say, ““There is a huge opportunity before us. The Q&A category is bigger than ever because no one has cracked this quite yet – and we are in an excellent position to do so given our approach and history with the consumer. Also, you’ll see us continue to invest in mobile over the next five years, as Q&A behavior increasingly translates to mobile devices. We have a pretty aggressive mobile product roadmap. I’d like to see us as the dominant provider of mobile Q&A services a few years from now.”

    Ask.com had over 60.5 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. alone in May (Compete), and that’s up from the previous month. To put that into perspective, Twitter.com had only about 29 million. AOL.com only had about 49.

    The YouTube API functionality will launch later this summer.

  • 3 Questions for Ask CEO Doug Leeds (And His Answers)

    3 Questions for Ask CEO Doug Leeds (And His Answers)

    This week, Ask.com celebrated its 15-year anniversary. You may recall a time when Ask was one of the most-used and talked about search engines on the web, and now the company has basically abandoned search in favor of a focus on Q&A, while using “a third party search provider” to provide its search results.

    We had the chance to ask CEO Doug Leeds a few questions about the company’s past and future. Below are those questions and his responses.

    Looking back to where Ask was 15 years ago, what surprises you the most about where it is today?

    “That we’ve come full circle. Ask has always been about questions and answers, but for a time, competitively speaking, we were focused on search as the primary means to that end. Throughout the last 15 years, one thing has remained constant: users come to us to ask questions and get answers, a behavior different than search. This has never changed – in fact, Ask.com sees more queries in the form of a question than any other site. Today, we’ve gone back to whole-heartedly focusing on that value proposition, but doing so through an approach that blends search with human-powered answers. Approach is different, goal is the same.”

    What is Ask’s greatest accomplishment over the past 15 years?

    “Many of our 1996 compatriots are no longer in the same business – if they’re in business at all. Ask.com is the 6th biggest property in the US with 90 million users. We’ve survived and grown because we offer users something unique. I’m pretty proud of that.”

    Where will Ask be in another 5 years?

    “There is a huge opportunity before us. The Q&A category is bigger than ever because no one has cracked this quite yet – and we are in an excellent position to do so given our approach and history with the consumer. Also, you’ll see us continue to invest in mobile over the next five years, as Q&A behavior increasingly translates to mobile devices. We have a pretty aggressive mobile product roadmap. I’d like to see us as the dominant provider of mobile Q&A services a few years from now.”

    Ask recently launched “Ask Around,” a mobile app that takes advantage of location and maps, and integrates them into the Q&A experience. We spoke with Ask’s Chief product and technology officer Lisa Kavanaugh about that at SXSW:

    Last month when Ask parent company IAC released its earnings, Chairman Barry Diller estimated IAC’s recent contract renewal with Google to be worth $5.5 billion over five years.

    To commemorate the 15-year anniversary of Ask.com, the company has launched a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #MyLast15, encouraging people to Tweet, TwitPic or TwitVid their favorite, funniest or even most horrifying memory from over the last 15 years.

  • SXSW – Ask Combines Q&A with the Location-Based Service

    Ask announced a couple weeks ago that it would be debuting a new mobile app called Ask Around here at SXSW. WebProNews caught up with Ask.com Chief Product and Technology Officer Lisa Kavanaugh to talk about it a little.

    “We found that search was getting sort of commoditized, and for us it was really about questions and answers, and our users forgot what they were coming to us for,” she tells us. “We’ve just been investing there, and we found that we use search as an advantage to pulling the answers that are already on the web.”

    “We’ve taken the Q&A concept to mobile, which is the really natural use case,” she adds. “People are on the go. They have a question and they want it answered right now, so now, we’ve taken that to ou mobile app.”

    “We’ve found that people are starting to use it as a chat a bit,” she says. “They’re using it, they’re commenting, they’re wanting to talk with each other in the Q&A experience. So to tackle that, we’ve created a separate app, which we’re debuting here at SXSW.”

    The app itself takes advantage of location, features a map, and let’s you see what’s going on where you’re at. You can login with your Facebook account, so that should reduce any friction in using the app for most people.

    “The identity is really important to us, and have it be your real identity. And chat with people that are right there where you are, to see what’s going on,” says Kavanaugh.

    She says they’re using the app as an experiment to see where it takes Ask in the mobile, LBS realm.

  • Is New Ask Feature a Response to Growing Interest in Quora?

    Ask announced today that it is rolling out the ability to personalize the Q&A experience, which has become the core focus of the site. 

    Ask users can use the "Browse by Interests" tab to view questions/answers (content) that are relevant to them, which should make the experience a great deal more useful. 

    "This personalized experience is part of our larger vision for what Ask.com Q&A is about" says Director of Product Management Jason Rupp. "First, if the answer already exists on the Web and you can get it in milliseconds without bugging a single person, we should give it to you. Second, if you do need a person to answer, we should optimize the chances of you getting a high quality answer – quickly – as well as make it easy and fun to ask subsequent questions."

    "From a feature standpoint, that means things like intelligent routing so your question is delivered to the people most qualified to answer it first," adds Rupp. "The ability to follow people who consistently provide highly relevant questions and answers on the site also helps you customize your experience. And now, the ability to filter your experience to reflect the questions and answers most pertinent to your life takes that one step further."

    How To Personalize Browse Q&A on Ask.com from askdotcom on Vimeo.

    Another Q&A site called Quora has been getting a great deal of attention lately, and one of its features is the ability to follow topics as well as people. This new feature would appear to be following this concept, but Ask’s feature lets users grab profile info from other social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn to personalize the Interests they’re following. 

    The biggest draw to Quora thus far has been the quality of the content –  the caliber of people answering the questions. CEOs and other company executives, for example, have been answering questions, providing authoritative information. 

    As with any site, the quality of Ask’s new features will only be as good as the content that is available. Part of that is up to the user and what they choose to follow. Given that Ask is looking to the web (not just people) for answers, it should be pretty useful.

  • Ask Breaks Down Popular Holiday Gifts Based on Questions Asked

    As Christmas approaches, Ask is sharing some info about the hottest gift items this season, based on users of its Q&A service. 

    According to Ask’s findings, in the gaming category, Xbox is at the top of the list, with over 5% of all Ask.com questions being related to the console. According to the company, gamers asked nearly five times more questions about the Xbox than the Sony Playstation. Nintendo’s Wii was somewhere in between. 

    When it comes to movies, Harry Potter takes the cake. According to Ask, double the amount of questions were asked about Harry Potter, compared to Twilight, and five times more often than Avatar. 

    Then there’s gadgets. The iPhone received twice as many questions as the Droid. Interestingly, Amazon’s Kindle seemed to spark more interest than the iPad. The iPad received two-thirds the amount of questions as the Kindle, according to Ask. Barnes & Noble’s Nook received less than half as many questions as the Kindle. 

    Xbox a popular gift this holiday season

    "The Ask community agrees with the millions of questions asked by users overall, choosing the iPhone over the iPad this holiday season," the company says. "According to the community, while the iPad is easier on the eyes, flexible wins out. The iPhone4 is more portable, can be used as a phone, and is a lot less expensive than its larger counterpart."

    I don’t know that questions asked by users of Ask.com are the best indicator of what the most popular gifts of the year will be, but it is one sample worth considering. There is no doubt that the iPhone, Kindle, Xbox and Harry Potter will all be popular gifts. 

    Earlier this month, Ask shared the top ten questions/answers for the year, as well as the top questions in several specific categories like entertainment, tech, and health.

  • Dunkin Donuts Coffee and iPads Popular in 2010 Among Ask Users

    It’s now December, and in the search industry, that means it’s the time of the year that we get to look at the most searched things of the year. Bing shared its top ten searches the other day. Ask recently retired from true search, in order to focus on the niche its name suggests – questions and answers. 

    With that, the company has released its top questions and answers for 2010. This provides a more interesting picture of people’s interests this year in some ways. While Ask doesn’t have near the market share of a Google or even a Bing, the Q&A format tends to provide a bit more context than just keywords. 

    "With live people now addressing user questions, we see not only what people want to know, but real-time answers on a wide scope of issues and topics," said Doug Leeds, President of Ask.com US. "It’s a freeze frame on the current mindset of consumers, focused on everything from products and brands to culture and politics."

    Here are Ask’s Top 10 questions and answers for the year:

    Dunkin Donuts Coffee Tops Ask User Preferences 1. What is the best coffee under $10? Users say: Dunkin Donuts

    2. Are the new mini net books any good? Users say: Go with an iPad

    3. Where should I propose to my girlfriend? Users say: Take her where you went on your first date

    4. What’s the best cure for a stuffy nose? Users say: Hot shower and Vicks Vapor Rub

    5. What is the best child-friendly sushi? Users say: California Rolls, but Unagi and Ebi are also great choices

    6. As a beginner, is it worth paying for expensive ski boots? Users say: No, cut your teeth on some cheap ones

    7. What kind of dog should I get? Users say: Either a Boxer or a Lab

    8. What are the best websites for travel deals? Users say: Kayak.com and Travelzoo

    9. Do you have to peel apples when making homemade apple pie? Users say: Absolutely

    10. What’s the best new TV show? Users say: The Big Bang Theory

    Ask also provided top ten lists for the most popular questions answered in a few verticles like entertainment, tech, and health. Unfortunately, answers weren’t included in these lists. Some of them are probably quite amusing.  

    Here are Ask’s top entertainment questions:

    1. How old is Justin Bieber?

    2. Who is Taylor Swift dating?

    3. Does Justin Bieber have a girlfriend?

    4. How old is Kim Kardashian?

    5. Who is the highest paid teen star?

    6. Is Lady Gaga a man?

    7. What is Slash’s real name?

    8. Is Nicki Minaj gay?

    9. Is Beyonce pregnant?

    10. Is Demo Lovato in rehab?

    Top Technology/Internet Questions:

    1. What is the best brand of laptop?

    2. What is the best online game for iPod Touch?

    3. What is the best iPhone app?

    4. Is Apple coming out with the iPhone 5?

    5. Which is best: AT&T, Verizon or Sprint?

    6. What is an RSS feed?

    7. How do I create my own website?

    8. Is there a website where I can watch free movies online?

    9. What is the best available smart phone?

    10. Where can I download free music?

    Top Health and Fitness Questions:

    1. How much should I weigh?

    2. How do I get pregnant?

    3. What’s the best treatment for a migraine headache?

    4. How long does it take to get out of shape?

    5. How long does marijuana stay in your system?

    6. What’s the fastest way to lose weight and keep it off?

    7. How many calories are in a pound?

    8. Can men get breast cancer?

    9.  What causes hiccups?

    10. What are the symptoms of the swine flu?

    Ask says it has been the fourth largest Internet property for unique searches, attracting 90 million monthly unique users. 

  • Is a Shake-Up Brewing in the Search Market?

    (more…)

  • Ask.com Raises White Flag In Search Fight

    A Web pioneer of sorts is retiring from one of the industry’s most visible fights. Today, the president of Ask.com announced that Ask will dedicate all its resources to improving its Q&A service, and as a result, will no longer attempt to compete in terms of Web search.

    (more…)