Comments on: Ask.com, Semantic Search & the SEO Industry – SEM Synergy Extras

By: Gregman2

Gregman2 — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:28:53 +0000

You might check out http://www.yebol.com. It’s in beta, but very powerful, as far as semantic search goes.

By: Dr Phil

Dr Phil — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:46:47 +0000

Are you serious about the article above or joking? Ask is history for most users. The numbers above lie as they have acquired other properties that shows an inflated number. Yahoo has lost market share, but look at the base. It is 6x that of Ask. For me, there is no reason to use anything other than Google. Why would you use anything other than google?

By: SEO Phill

SEO Phill — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:12:34 +0000

Semantic SEO strategy

It’s a concept not many people have written about (if any).

I’d be happy to guest post any time

By: Virginia Nussey

Virginia Nussey — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:27:32 +0000

Hi Phill A semantic keyword strategy, eh? Now that’s an concept I haven’t read much about. I feel another post coming on!

By: Virginia Nussey

Virginia Nussey — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:58:03 +0000

Hey Lisa, I’ve actually been using Ask quite a bit lately!

Ask took a lot of heat for putting the kabash on its blended search, as you talked about in “Goodbye Ask.com: A Brand Evangelist Hangs It Up.” But how are we to know if their users were using blended search? Look how long the other top-tier engines got by with 10 blue links. If people weren’t using blended because they were more comfortable with search’s traditional interface, then it could make sense to scale back on that project. I think it’s funny that the industry gives Ask so much flack for trying to tailor its service to its audience. From the Forbes article you linked to:

In March, Ask announced it was laying off around 8% of its employees and changing strategies, focusing on women above 30 and searchers looking for answers to questions about health and entertainment, who it said made up a disproportionately large part of its user base. To many search industry watchers, that sounded like an admission of defeat.

Something I didn’t mention in the post is Ask’s strategy to develop audience-centric verticals, like what they’ve been doing for NASCAR. Ask is targeting categories filled with passionate community members and goldmines of structured data, making the best search experience out there for topics like sports and entertainment. For what they do, I don’t see anyone else that even comes close.

By: SEO Phill

SEO Phill — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:43:04 +0000

What I find odd is that despite the improvements taking place with semantic search technology, the majority of SEOs still insist on using a keyword strategy that doesn’t take semantics into account.
ASK is doing some great work and has been innovating steadily for some years now – but the recent slew of semantic improvements from Google are also being taken at face value and strategy isn’t changing.
You only need to look at the recent PageRank sculpting fiasco with SEOmoz at its centre to see that SEOs are losing touch instead of keeping up.

By: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:23:24 +0000

Ask's commitment to providing the best answer the first time embodies the engine's compassion for users. And Ask's long tradition of innovative search technology speaks to the engine's commitment to trust.

Ask.com threw away its technology, it's provocativeness and its trustworthiness when it spit in users' faces and then lied to us about what was going on. They can pretend they're still growing and evolving all they want. The simple fact is that they don't exist anymore. Which is a shame, because they used to be great and the only "original" engine out there.

I'm not sure which "qualities of a great search engine" Ask.com really has. Have you used Ask lately? I'm not even sure I'd call them a search engine anymore. They have, however, grown up into a mighty fine arbitrage site. Safka can be proud of the failure he created and then abandoned.