There’s a search engine that’s been quietly gaining market share over the past few months. But it’s not an entirely new player. In fact, it’s an relatively old site, which has been dramatically redesigned, with a number of new bells and whistles added.
Ask.com, previously AskJeeves.com, is keen to remind people that not only are they still around, but that they could be the success story of 2007. An in-depth article on CNet.com revealed that they have been chosen by Lycos to replace Microsoft as their Natural Search engine and replace Google as their sponsored listings provider. So where has this come from?
New features, such as a zoom option to expand or narrow a search, and binoculars to see a preview of the sites next to the search results, has won acclaim from experts and led it to be identified as the second fastest growing search engine in the US (Google making the number one spot). Another reason for their growing success has been attributed to their advertising strategy - in essence, they’ve reduced the number. An executive at the company reasons that although this has led to a drop in advertising revenue, more people have returned to the site, which long term has increased revenue. They are well aware of the fact that the biggest challenge they face is to convince people to change their search engine allegiance, which is going to take more than a few user interface tweaks.
[Via Cnet]