By Tomio Geron
Ask.com, the IAC/InterActiveCorp.-owned search engine, today launched a new results structure that packs in features and limits ads in hopes of gaining market share and bringing benefits to IAC’s wide array of holdings.
Dubbed Ask3D, the revamped product has some similarities to Google’s recently launched Universal Search, incorporating images and videos in search results. But Ask is both more structured and has more bells and whistles.
Ask.com is the fourth largest search engine by volume, with 5.1 percent of U.S. searches, compared with 49.7 percent for Google, 26.8 percent for Yahoo, 10.3 for Microsoft, and 5.0 for AOL, according to comScore.
Ask.com’s new results page includes a small “smart answer” section at the top with a text sketch, short one-word web links, and often a thumbnail photo. On the right is a list of available information in different formats, including images, videos, and songs that can be blown up or played by rolling over the link with a mouse. On the left are subtopics for narrowing a search, expanding it, or looking at related topics.
While Google offers similar features, Ask has a common, repetitive structure with text links in the middle and multimedia on the right, whereas Google orders all available information by relevance, no matter the format.
Ask.com also places fewer advertisements on its results page—a maximum of eight on each page——and no “sponsored links” on the side. It does not hide the fact, however, that it promotes IAC’s other properties in its multimedia search results. Music sharing Web site iLike for example, in which IAC owns a 25 percent interest, is displayed within the list in a music search. Non-IAC properties can also be partners in offering multimedia content, said Daniel Read, vice president of product and user experience.
“Our stated objective is to grow market share significantly,” Read said. “We want to emphasize user experience to put out the best product possible and we can monetize at the appropriate rate.”
That rate could grow fast if the search engine can get advertisers to place an ad on an IAC site and then display another ad within search results that include that site. “When selling advertising, they can do more packaged deals,” said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer. “Not just direct response, but brand advertisers want to include search as part of their campaigns.”
New York-based IAC, which acquired Ask Jeeves in 2005 and renamed it Ask.com, has a sprawling Web empire that includes media, product, and service-oriented sites such as Citysearch, Evite, Match.com, Ticketmaster, and Lending Tree, according to Scott Kessler, analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
As of its last quarterly results released in May, IAC reported a $10 billion market cap on $1.6 billion in revenue. Revenue from IAC’s media and advertising unit, driven by Ask, was up 43 percent from last year, the company said.
Ask.com’s reach is expansive enough to also interest the major search engines in partnering with it. It is currently contracted with Google to carry Google’s advertisers on its results pages. When that contract runs out at the end of the year, Ask.com is in a “very strong position” to negotiate a more lucrative contract with Yahoo, Microsoft, or Google, according to S&P’s Mr. Kessler.
Despite its powerful search structure, however, attracting more users will be tough. “Ask has been a leader in search innovation and technology in the last number of years but I think I’m in the minority in knowing and understanding that,” Mr. Kessler said. “That inherently is the problem.”
