How important is Ask.com?

The American search engine ASK.com (also known as AskJeeves.com), which has been took over by InterActiveCorp in summer 2005, claims to be among the 7 biggest portals worldwide. Hereby it is referring to a study by ComScore Media Metrix published in March, which I do not know of. However, according to Alexa.com traffic ranks Ask.com is ranked at position 118. In comparison to this, Google.com is ranked at position 3. Maybe this study includes other portals which belong to Ask.com as well or which make use of the Ask.com search technology.

Either way, the latest developments at Ask.com are interesting: on the one hand InterActiveCorp is a potent investor. On the other hand Ask.com has launched an own sponsored link service and thus joins Google, Yahoo, Miva and MSN (Beta version).

Should Ask.com be able to increase its importance in the non-English-speaking part of the world additional positive effects can be expected.

What is your opinion?

Dr. Robert Biermann
Webeffekt AG
Magnusstr. 18
46535 Dinslaken
Germany
www.Webeffekt.de
www.Metaposition.de