I Can't be Asked.

[JKomp]

With all these different search engines to optimise for, can anyone actually be asked to worry about/check how they rank in Ask? Does anyone get any significant traffic from Ask.com? Is it indeed your main referrer?

I just don't want to have to worry about a 4th engine, good ranking in Ask will follow good ranking with the others, right?

[JuniorOnline]

thats right - what you do to all 3 engines, it gets picked up with ASK as well. thats what I have been told by ctbuck

[scanmonkey]

Including Ask and the Ask-owned sites of Teoma, MyWay.com, iWon and My Search, there is traffic equalivent to aol. Something like 7% of all searches. The ask results for the keywords I watch are a lot different than what I see on google, msn, yahoo. Though I have one site that does well on all four.

I guess the amount of traffic you would receive from ask would depend on your market. I don't receive much traffic from ask.

I would like to hear any ideas on how to optimize for ask as the monkey is always looking for new tricks. One difference I have noticed is that Ask does not use a directory like msn, yahoo and google (dmoz)

[brian.mark]

Ask.com uses what they call "Hubs & Authorities". (I'm missing Jeeves already - at least I knew who was picking out the authorities, then).

The concept is basically that a hub links to a whole lot of related sites (directories fit the definition) and authorities get linked to by the sites that the hubs pick out. Authorities and hubs get traffic, with authorities typically having more of the results for more specific queries and hubs having more of the results for researching and comparison type queries.

That's the really high level view, scanmonkey.

As for JKomp's question on traffic, we see lower traffic but much higher conversion from Ask.com to both of our primary sites. Depending on the week, 2% - 4% of our search traffic comes from them (7% - 9% if I add all of their properties), and they convert at well over double the rate of any of the other engines. I'm not concerning myself too much with the traffic numbers right now, but they've certainly got the right guy heading up the company now to create a 4th major network of search. He's been great at using differences as a strength in the past, so I'm excited by what they've got going now.

Brian.

[scanmonkey]

Ask.com uses what they call "Hubs & Authorities". (I'm missing Jeeves already - at least I knew who was picking out the authorities, then).

The concept is basically that a hub links to a whole lot of related sites (directories fit the definition) and authorities get linked to by the sites that the hubs pick out. Authorities and hubs get traffic, with authorities typically having more of the results for more specific queries and hubs having more of the results for researching and comparison type queries.

Brian.

Informative and useful information on how ask works!

[scanmonkey]

.

..., we see lower traffic but much higher conversion from Ask.com to both of our primary sites. Depending on the week, 2% - 4% of our search traffic comes from them (7% - 9% if I add all of their properties), and they convert at well over double the rate of any of the other engines.

Brian.

Very interesting on the conversion rate. A nice bit of traffic and conversion.

[carju1]

Well with all the whoha about ASK relaunch and even posters in Swansea I thought I'd check it out (must be 2 years since I used it).

The pages it lists for some of my clients have been dead deleted and not existing for over 12 months. Looks like the have really tried for the relaunch - NOT. I like most consumers won't accept rubbish search results so will happliy trot back to Google and Yahoo and maybe try it out again in 2007.

OK more scientifically I checked the logs for last month for all my client sites. The best results as % were .... Search engine sent Visitors 1312, sent from ask 60 = 5% ... Search engine sent Visitors 614, sent from ask 16 = 3% .... Search engine sent Visitors 387, sent from ask 7 = 2% ..... All the other clients were < 2%. So I'll keep an eye on it once a month when I check stats but other than that not spend any time on it.

Carju1

[ryanforbes]

I get nothing from ask what so ever even if I type in my company name "Moray Firth Jobs" yet Yahoo, Msn. Excite and many others rank me number 1 for my main keyword "Jobs Inverness" Google dont rank me all that wel for the "jobs Inverness" keyword but they do for others.

The only way I come up in Ask is when i type in my URL

[Jabber_uk]

I have used Jeeves for a long time either! The only time I have used it was to ask stupid questions like:

"Jeeves, why the hell are you so useless at giving me search results you useless xxxxxx" (Replace th ex's with your own expletive. Funny the results you get when you ask something like that!

Having said that - I notice for one of my search terms ("Computer services plymouth"), I am doing quite well in the results (no.2).

Oh! I noticed that in my stats I have had one (yes ONE) referral from ask in the last six months! omg that sux - I am gonna cry! :'(

[brian.mark]

I have used Jeeves for a long time either! The only time I have used it was to ask stupid questions like:

"Jeeves, why the hell are you so useless at giving me search results you useless xxxxxx" (Replace th ex's with your own expletive. Funny the results you get when you ask something like that!

Having said that - I notice for one of my search terms ("Computer services plymouth"), I am doing quite well in the results (no.2).

Oh! I noticed that in my stats I have had one (yes ONE) referral from ask in the last six months! omg that sux - I am gonna cry! :'(

One? Wow. We've only seen about 5,000 this year from them to one of our sites, and I thought that I was doing something wrong... at least it's not a single digit. ;-)

Really, I don't think they get the same mix of people. Computer services people probably choose google, the older generations seem to like ask from what I can tell. I suppose that means we're getting retired woodworkers... ;-)

Brian.

[Jabber_uk]

Perhaps my company is too 'hip' and 'with it' and 'on the street man' for ask.com users?


roflmao :D

[jawn_tech]

One thing I'm still trying to pinpoint is how often Ask is updating / refreshing. In addition to all their advertising lately, it would do them well to increase the frequency on their updates.

[brian.mark]

it would do them well to increase the frequency on their updates.

What updates? LOL.

Really, I haven't seen much in the way of updates myself, but they seem to have pretty relevant results. My dad even tried them out and found much better results than Google for some search he did... wish I remembered what it was.

Brian.

[nkycomputers]

I rank well for my keywords on Ask.com but I have yet to get even 1 referall from them. I get around 1000 unique visitors a month from the big 3.

In answer to the update frequency question. Ask is still showing outdated pages that haven't existed for over 12 months. They do change which pages are ranked at different times but what is odd is the nonexistent pages seem to rank higher than the existing pages. But that is what redirects are for.

I wouldn't worry about them too much right now. But as others have said I keep seeing the commercials too and am wondering when people will start using them again.