I was messing around with the Ask.com interface on my Mac and decided to compare some results between my Mac browser and Internet Explorer for PC. I noticed that Ask.com is now displaying five sponsored results for many keyword searches. The organic results are now below the fold, like they once were before dropping Jeeves.

One of many searches where you can find five sponsored results at the top of the Ask.com results is for mp3 players.

Here is the result in IE for PCs:

But when you search in Safari or Firefox, you only get three ads at the top:

This is a huge shame. It was one of my biggest complaints back in 2004 with my article named The Little Engine That Could. I blasted Ask.com’s representative, where I said back then that by placing so many ads above your organic results, it says that you feel the ads are more relevant than their own search results. It is a shame to see Ask.com moving back in this direction.

Related Topics: Ask: Sponsored Listings | Ask: Web Search

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz