Ten days ago, we reported that Antonio Gulli left Ask.com after 4 years heading up their technology team in the European R&D center. Gulli announced his new plans are to continue in search, but switch ships and work for Microsoft Bing.

Gulli said he will be “leading all the engineering development for UX and verticals in Europe,” focusing on Microsoft Bing’s search technology and user interface. He will be working at Microsoft’s London site of STC Europe nearby Carnaby Street.

What I found most interesting about his announcement post was that he, in not so many words, explained that he now has the resources needed to make a difference in search. The way I read it was that he felt that at Ask.com, he didn’t have enough resources to accomplish his goals. Gulli said that at Microsoft “you get the resources to experiment with it.”"Search is all about continuous improvements and evolutions, isn’t it?” Gulli added.

Congrats on the new job Antonio, it seems like you will be happy at Microsoft.

The next Ask.com personality to leave Ask.com is Antonio Gulli who was hired about four years ago to lead up the technology team in the European R&D center. Antonio announced he is leaving and explained what he worked while at Ask.com.

He worked on:

• Image Search
• News and Blog search
• Video News Search
• DailyBeast
• Core Web Search Infrastructure
• RealTime Fresh Web Ranking
• Core Frontend Platform for UK

Here was Antonio’s bio prior to joining Ask.com:

Antonio was the creator of the first Italian Search engine in 1998, Arianna, and he was CEO/CTO of Ideare (sold to Tiscali S.p.a. in 2001) where he created products such as audio, video, and image search. Antonio has recently been working on a PhD in Pisa, researching the areas of Information Retrieval, Web Clustering, and Web Ranking technologies. You can explore his areas of research and play with the applications that he has developed at http://www.di.unipi.it/~gulli/.

We would like to wish you the best with your new ventures Antonio.

Postscript: On August 29th, Antonio informed us that he has joined the Microsoft Bing team. He will be working in the new Search Technology Centre (STC) in Europe on the Bing Search technology and “leading all the engineering development for UX and verticals in Europe.”

Yesterday, Google joined Twitter with a company account. We twittered a few search engine-related addresses as part of our post about that, but we wanted to do one that was a little more organized. So welcome to our big search engine Twitter list!

The list isn’t complete, nor will it ever be. But that’s how it went with blogging. A few years ago, search engines and their employees jumped into the world of blogging (our Search Engine Land blogroll lists a number of these). “Who’s blogging” lists soon emerged, until blogging became so mainstream that people stopped bothering to keep track.

Now the early adopters are turning to Twitter, and in turn, making it more mainstream. Here’s a starting list of who’s out there from the search engine world:

Google & Google Product Blogs

• google / Google (main account)
• youtube / YouTube
• googleimages / Google Image Search
• googlereader / Google Reader
• googleapps / Google Apps
• blogger / Blogger

(NOTE: See also Google Posts List Of All Its Official Twitter Accounts, which was posted after this article was written)

Google: Web Search

• mattcutts / Matt Cutts (head of web spam team)
• brianwhite / Brian White (program manager with web spam team)
• nathanjohns / Nathan Johns (search quality analyst)
• beahburger / Beah Burger (search quality evaluator)
• reidyokoyama / Reid Yokoyama (search quality team)
• wysz / Michael Wyszomierski (search quality team)
• pedrodias / Pedro Dias (search quality team)
• filiber / Fili (search quality)

Google: Webmaster Central

• googlewmc / Google Webmaster Central (main account)
• susanmoskwa / Susan Moskwa (Google Webmaster Central)
• peeyush / Peeyush Ranjan (Google Webmaster Central)
• thatadamguy / Adam Lasnik (webmaster relations)
• johnmu / John Mueller (webmaster relations

Google: AdWords

• adwordshelper (main AdWords support account)
• adwordsprosarah (additional AdWords support account)

Google: More Twitters

• avinashkaushik / Avinash Kaushik (Google Analytics evangelist)
• cdibona / Chris DiBona (Open Source evangelist, among other titles)
• iamjason / Jason Morrison (Googler)
• jhuber / Jeff Huber (senior vice president, engineering)
• joshu / Joshua Schachter (technical staff at Google & founder, Delicious)
• kraneland / David Krane (long-time Google PR maestro)
• larrybrilliant / Larry Brilliant (chief philanthropy evangelist, Google.org)
• mikeleotta / Mike Leotta (Google webmaster)
• rklau / Rick Klau (business product manager, Blogger)
• skamdar / Sagar Kamdar (product manager)

Microsoft: Live Search

• live_search / Live Search (main account)
• nathanbuggia / Nathan Buggia (Microsoft Webmaster Center)
• jandrick / Jeremiah Andrick (Microsoft Webmaster Center)
• ayazook / Aya Zook (Microsoft Live Search marketing)
• benmwatson / Ben Watson (Live Search software engineer)
• fareologist (official Microsoft Live Search Farecast)
• cashbackdotcom (official Microsoft Live Search cashback)

Microsoft: adCenter

• adcenterblog / adCenter Blog (main Microsoft adCenter account)
• msadvertising / Microsoft Advertising Europe
• melcarson / Mel Carson (adCenter community relations)

Microsoft: Powerset & Other

• powerset / Powerset (main account)
• barneyp / Barney Pell (Powerset founder)
• jsenior / James Senior (Live services evangelist)

Yahoo & Yahoo Product Blogs

• yahoo / Yahoo (main Yahoo account)
• yahoogames / Yahoo Games
• yahoomovies / Yahoo Movies

Yahoo: Buzz

• yahoobuzz / Yahoo Buzz main account
• yahoosearchdata /Yahoo Search Data (interesting stats from Yahoo Buzz)
• meredfern / Joff Redfern (VP Yahoo Buzz)

Yahoo: Web Search

• searchmonkey / Yahoo Search Monkey main account
• cornett / Larry Cornett (vice president, Yahoo Search Product)
• crispierry / Cris Pierry (general manager, Yahoo Search)
• grahammudd / Graham Mudd (Yahoo Search Monkey & BOSS)
• jpederse / Jan Pedersen (Chief scientistt, Yahoo Search & Ad Tech Group)
• mwinters58 / Mike Winters (Yahoo Search team)
• rajgossain / Raj Gossain (vice president, Yahoo Search)
• sheila / Sheila Tran (Yahoo PR)

Yahoo: More Twitters

• adamzarlengo / Adam Zarlengo (product manager, Yahoo Movies)
• dennismortensen / Dennis Mortensen (director of data insights)
• kylelaughlin / Kyle Laughlin (general manager, Yahoo Games)
• lauralippay / Laura Lippay (director of technical marketing)
• tonyadam / Tony Adam (SEO for Yahoo Audience Marketing)
• yahooguy / Gabe Elliott (search and display ad exec)

Ask

• askdotcom / Ask.com Europe
• keithhogan / Keith Hogan (vice president, technology)

Techmeme

• techmeme / Techmeme (main account)
• gaberivera / Gabe Rivera (founder, Techmeme)
• megan / Megan McCarthy (editor, Techmeme)

Twitter

• twitter / Twitter (main account)
• ev / Evan Williams (CEO, Twitter & cofounder)
• biz / Biz Stone (Twitter cofounder)

Others

• craignewmark (Founder of Craigslist)
• kevinrose / Kevin Rose (Founder, Digg)
• skrenta / Rich Skrenta (CEO, Blekko)
• thegoldenhat (head of SEO for Facebook)

And don’t forget, the editors here at Search Engine Land are on Twitter, along with Search Engine Land itself:

• sengineland, Search Engine Land
• dannysullivan, Danny Sullivan
• elisabethos, Elisabeth Osmeloski
• gsterling, Greg Sterling
• mattmcgee, Matt McGee
• michellerobbins, Michelle Robbins (technical directory
• rustybrick, Barry Schwartz
• vanessafox, Vanessa Fox

We know we’re missing people. Please add them to the comments below!

Two big names have left Yahoo and Ask and speculation is that a third is to go. Below, more about he departures of Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawdony, Ask’s Peter Linsley, and Yahoo’s Jeffrey Weiner, who is rumored to be leaving soon.

Jeremy Zawdony just announced he is leaving Yahoo. Jeremy has been with Yahoo for over eight years now and was one of Yahoo’s most prolific bloggers. As an analogy, Zawdony is the Scoble or Cutts of Yahoo. Major loss for Yahoo? In my opinion, Yes. Jeremy did not say what his future holds but he did offer some advice for those at Yahoo:

As for the future of Yahoo, everyone working at Yahoo today knows in their gut what Yahoo should be and needs to be. My advice is to work on making that happen. Don’t let anyone else (inside or outside the company) try to tell you what Yahoo is. Trust your gut.

Peter Linsley, former Senior Product Manager for Search at Ask.com, has left Ask.com to join Google. Peter was the man at Ask that knew everything there was about how the Ask.com algorithm, search results, user interface, and so on worked. If I had a question about relevancy or the search page, he knew the answer off the top of his head. Peter hasn’t announced that he left Ask.com, but it is not secret. He left and is now working at Google as a product manager and is working on the image search team. Major loss for Ask.com? In my opinion, Yes. Peter does have a blog at PeterLinsley.com which is not updated all that often.

Finally, there is a lot of speculation that Yahoo’s Executive Vice President, Jeff Weiner, is going to be leaving Yahoo soon. Weiner is on paternity leave for the past four weeks and returns this Monday. It is expect that he will announce his departure today or tomorrow. Where will he work next? Rumors are that he will join “Accel Partners and Greylock Partners and perhaps even Benchmark Capital or Sequoia Capital,” said Kara Swisher.

AllThingD’s Kara Swisher does a wide ranging video interview with former Ask CEO Jim Lanzone. Among other things, Swisher and Lanzone discuss “the future of search” (at only the very highest level, however).

Lanzone discusses Ask3D and the general trend toward introducing more structured and multimedia content into search results, and the movement away from the proverbial “10 blue links.”

Regarding the Microsoft-Yahoo merger, Lanzone says it will benefit smaller search players in the market. He asserts that Microsoft’s cash might be able to fund greater innovation at Yahoo rather than shutting down innovation as some have asserted (assuming the deal goes through).

Swisher asks Lanzone for his predictions for search five years out. Lanzone opines that social media will be more integrated into general search. He also says that 30-40 percent of search could move to mobile devices in five years, but downplays the idea of most of that content being local.

Back on the desktop, Lanzone sees more “guidance” being provided to users in the form of query refinement and options after the query is entered into the search box.

Swisher asks, as a final question, “What’s the most hyped thing you’re seeing out there?” Lanzone replies, “beyond social networks, virtual worlds.”

With Jim Lanzone being replaced as Ask.com’s CEO, I thought it time to do a piece that’s been banging about in my head. Do successful search companies have to have CEOs or top execs who "grew up" from the search product side? The jury is probably still out, but it’s interesting to look back at each of the major players and understand where those in charge have come from.

Google

No question — both Google co-presidents Larry Page and Sergey Brin are search product folks. They literally built the first version of Google and were very involved with how the search engine developed in Google’s initial years.

Today, Google’s far more than a search engine. It offers a range of portal features, is developing into a stealth social network, is a major ad network, and more. The two — along with CEO Eric Schmidt, who is NOT a search product person — sit above all this. Does it really make a difference at this point that they have a search product background?

I’d argue yes. While search development is now run by a range of execs, from Marissa Mayer through Peter Norvig through Udi Manber and more, I think part of Google’s success remains due to the fact that at the very top, you’ve got two people who remember being on the search product frontlines, building a product, and working day-to-day in the trenches to please the searchers. Despite Google’s many activities today, the duo grew up with search, and I believe they still view it as a primary product worth protecting.

Yahoo

I’ve covered Yahoo longer than Google, by virtue of Yahoo being older than the Big G. And in its heyday, Yahoo was THE search engine that drove traffic to sites and was used by searchers in droves. Terry Semel did NOT take Yahoo down the portal path, but certainly when he took over, the company seemed to be less interested in search and more about building its own content.

To be fair, during Semel’s reign, Yahoo purchased Overture as well as Inktomi, AltaVista, and AllTheWeb, giving it a huge head start over Microsoft to compete against Google in the search space. And today, Yahoo remains well ahead of Microsoft.

Also, while Semel was in charge, Yahoo did move forward with much search development. But from afar, it always felt like the company was still eying being a destination, that the goal was to own properties in the way a Hollywood executive would.

Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang took over last June. Like Larry and Sergey, he was a search product person — he, with David Filo, built Yahoo and also worked on the frontlines to please searchers. That experience is in his blood, and I expect it will help make the difference as Yahoo goes forward.

In a fortunate coincidence, I happened to be on the Yahoo campus last October when there was a company-wide event celebrating the relaunch of Yahoo search. Yang took part, both in a quiz game to demonstrate the new search features to Yahoos, as well as to pump them up. He talked about the importance of search, how crucial it was, and it came across as real — that he was really believing that, as I expect he does.

Ask.com

It was real sadness to read last night that Jim Lanzone was leaving Ask. To me, Jim is the search product guy "done good." Unlike Google and Yahoo, he was someone who worked on the search frontlines and worked his way to the top, becoming Ask’s CEO in April 2006. No, Ask didn’t dent Google’s share, which is suggested as one reason behind the management change. But compared to Microsoft, Ask held share — which is a huge accomplishment.

The key thing about Jim was that he really cared about search. He was passionate about it, and it wouldn’t be uncommon for me or others who cover search to get an email out of the blue from him, riding our butts if he disagreed with a review or passing along points he thought were important.

In particular, Jim was desperate to see search leap forward and abandon the "ten blue links" mode it had been stuck in for ages. That particular phrase, by the way, if not coined by Jim certainly was popularized by him to explain how search was stuck in a DOS-era like interface. Ask3D was his baby, launching the most revolutionary search interface any major search engine had tried and bringing Ask along the Search 3.0 path.

I’m sure the other major search engines will start to break further away from the "one big column of links" mode. When they do, Jim will have been the trailblazer that lead the way.

Still, Ask3D didn’t improve Ask’s fortunes — so did having a "search guy" really help? Time will tell. We’ll see how the new execs drive things forward. With luck, they’ll continue to let Ask be innovative and unique with search and focus on growing traffic by finding better ways to spread the word about Ask plus staying focused on core relevancy.

Microsoft

Microsoft is the Johnny-come-lately to search. It has continued to generally lose search share despite huge investment, and it is also the only one of the major players where the people at the top — Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer – have no search background.

Microsoft didn’t see Google coming. Even before Google, they didn’t see a need to develop their own internal crawling tools, and the effort from 2003 onward to take on Google has largely seen management changes, constant relaunches, promises of "give us six months" alternating with "it’s early days," but in the end still playing third place to Google and Yahoo.

I’ve got no doubt that Microsoft sees search as important, but sorry, I can’t say that the top execs feel it in their bones the way the other companies have. I have one (perhaps biased) example to demonstrate this: I could never get either Gates or Ballmer to keynote a search conference I’ve organized.

It’s probably been three years now that I’ve worked on this. I know the search teams at Microsoft would like to see either of them do it, but it clearly hasn’t been a priority. Gates will speak at small security conferences, does CES, but address a huge audience of search marketers — people who are funding a big chunk of the future of his company? Apparently not worth the time.

In contrast, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt from Google both understood the importance of addressing that audience and have made time. Jerry Yang from Yahoo did. Steve Berkowitz, Jim Lanzone, and Barry Diller from IAC did. Personally, I think either Gates or Ballmer need to have the experience that Diller had. On stage with me in 2006, in front of an audience of perhaps 3,000 people, he asked who all the people were. "Those are your customers," I replied — and those customers were also searchers, and they also came away impressed that the top person at Ask had come out to address them (I know, because I spoke to many people who remarked about this). It demonstrated real seriousness.

Microsoft is in the search game, and don’t get me wrong, no sour grapes on the keynoting failures –  I’m glad they are there. I want them to successfully keep up the pressure on Google and Yahoo, as well as Ask, so that search improves overall. But does it make a difference that the top execs may feel search is something they "have to do" rather than want to? Maybe. Maybe, as Rand Fishkin recently suggested, Microsoft needs to let Live Search have more independence (and yeah, go back to MSN).

Rand’s not the first suggest this — others have said similar things over the years — but it’s a good reminder. Would an MSN with someone from out of the search trenches stay focused on search, and be more successful? I honestly don’t know. I can only say that at this point, the two that Microsoft is chasing most have search folks way up at the top.

For more on the Ask management change, see discussion at Techmeme. ]]> http://searchengineland.com/a-search-product-ceo-necessary-to-win-the-search-engine-game-13104/feed 0 http://searchengineland.com/jim-safka-to-replace-jim-lanzone-as-ceo-of-askcom-13101 http://searchengineland.com/jim-safka-to-replace-jim-lanzone-as-ceo-of-askcom-13101#comments Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:43:55 +0000 Barry Schwartz http://searchengineland.com/beta/jim-safka-to-replace-jim-lanzone-as-ceo-of-askcom-13101.php

IAC, Ask.com’s parent company, has announced that Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Ask.com, will be replaced immediately by Jim Safka as the new CEO of Ask.com. Safka was previously the CEO of Match.com, IAC’s online dating company, from 2004 to 2007. He will also retain his job at as CEO of Primal Ventures, an investment arm of Internet conglomerate IAC.

Lanzone will leave to work as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Venture Capital firm Redpoint Ventures. He was appointed CEO of Ask on April 24, 2006, to replace Steve Berkowitz, who jumped ship to Microsoft at that time.

I know Jim Lanzone will be sorely missed by the search marketing industry. He has been a friend to many of us and I also am very sad to see him go. This is a personal disappointment to me, way more than when Jeeves left Ask.

Barry Diller, CEO of IAC, said:

Jim Lanzone was the principal executive responsible for Ask.com’s turnaround over the last two years. His passion for innovation and his every day dedication to the business and its people have been everything anyone could ask for. He is a superb executive and leader and I’m hopeful we can be associated in the future.

Why did Diller replace Lanzone with Safka? In his statement, Diller said:

These changes are intended to strengthen and streamline the operating structure at IAC, both leading up to our intended spin-offs, and beyond.

I Fought the Law from the New York Times tells the story of how Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone abandoned pursuing a legal degree and learned his true passion was for internet companies.

Lanzone attended Emory University’s School of Law in Atlanta. He then worked for Justice Hugh P. Thompson at the Supreme Court of Georgia, and then had a summer job at law firm after his freshman year. But the law wasn’t his thing, he wasn’t excited with it. So he decided to go earn an M.B.A. degree, which he said made him see the world “in color.”

From there he had an internship at KnowX, which gave him the desire to start his own internet company. That company was named eTour, based in Atlanta in 1997.

eTour was a “discovery engine” that gave tours of Web sites that matched people’s interests. Lanzone helped raise $52 million in capital for the company, which he sold to Ask Jeeves in 2001.

Ask Jeeves asked Jim Lanzone to stay on to head product management. At that time the company was selling on the market at 79 cents a share, way down from the high of $196.

From there, it is all history. Ask Jeeves bought Teoma and then itself was puchased by Barry Diller’s IAC in 2005. The company was renamed to Ask.com, and then Ask’s then CEO Steve Berkowitz left for Microsoft. Jim Lanzone took the lead and became Ask.com’s CEO.

What is next? Jim says:

The next 10 years in the internet industry will make the last 10 seem almost trivial. People still underestimate how big the Internet is going to be in their lives.

I love an underdog, especially a smart underdog. So I’m definitely rooting for Ask.com, because I think they’ve been an undervalued player in the search game. All the headlines have been focused on the big three and in the meantime, the team back at Ask.com has been quietly building a better search engine. A much better search engine. And from the user’s point of view, one of the main people to thank is Michael Ferguson, Ask’s key user interface person.

Michael and I met a few years ago when we both presented on the same panel at Search Engine Strategies (the name of the city escapes me at the moment). This was back when the butler was safely riding high at the top of the results page. Jeeves seemed blissfully unaware of what his fate might be in a few short months. I was a little apprehensive when I saw Michael’s name on the panel notes, because I had publicly taken Ask Jeeves to task a number of times previously for their unabashed jamming of sponsored ads at the top of the page, driving the top organic listings below the fold. Our first eye tracking study had showed what a dangerous and limited view of monetization this was. You might make the quarter, but you’re blowing off your customers and in the long run, it will kill you. I was picturing an ugly public display of differing viewpoints, degenerating into a full blown SES smackdown.

After the session, when Michael and I grabbed a few moments to chat, I hesitantly touched on this. To my surprise, Michael’s first comment was “You think I don’t know that?” He then launched into a bit of a rant (it was a very gentile rant, Michael is a pretty low-key guy) about how he’d been passionately arguing this internally to anyone who would listen. Well, with IAC’s acquisition of Ask, it seems they’re listening. Michael has the room to do what he wants with the user experience, and monetization has been moved down the priority list in favor of winning back users. See, what did I tell you about Ask being smart?

Anyway, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Michael as a usability guy and now that he has to freedom to work, I knew we’d be seeing some promising things rolling out of the Ask X sandbox. I had a chance to catch up with Michael a week or so ago just to check in. As per normal with these interviews, I’ll be pulling excerpts and adding my analysis for this column and I’ve posted the full transcript on my blog.

The first thing I did was ask about Michael (and Ask’s) approach to user experience:

Michael: A lot of what we do is, to some extent, informed by core search needs but also by our relevant market share, understanding that people have often experienced other engines before they come to us, not necessarily in that session but generally on the web. People have at least done a few searches on Google and Yahoo, so they have some context coming from those search experiences. Often, we’re taking what we’ve learned from best practices from our competitors and on top of that, trying to add a lot of product experience and relevance experiences that are differentiated.

And also, of course, we’re come from this longer history of the company where we’ve had various user experiences over the time we’ve been around. We marketed around natural language in the late 90’s and answered people’s questions at the top of the page, but in the last year and a half or so, we’ve rebranded and really focused on getting the word out to the end users that we are a keyword search engine, an everyday search engine. A lot of the things that we’ve done with users have been to try to implicitly, if not explicitly, inform users that are coming to the site you can use it very much like you can use any other kind of search engine you’ve been on before. Or, if they’re current users and people are coming back to the site, to let them know that the range of experiences and the type of information we bring back to them has greatly expanded. It’s informed by the context of not just a sense of pure search and information retrieval and all the research that’s gone on that in the last 35 or 40 years, but also the dynamics of the experiences that we’ve had before and people’s previous experiences with Ask and then, an acknowledgement that they’ve often searched and looked for information on other sites.

The role of being number 4 (although they’re not that far behind Microsoft) has put Ask in an interesting position. They can take chances the other players can’t with the interface, because they don’t have to worry as much about disrupting a major revenue channel. For Michael, this represents a golden opportunity to take some risks and push the competition in terms of interface innovation. The sandbox of that innovation has been AskX.com, but it looks like Michael and his team are shortening the rollover cycle from the beta bed to the live site, based on good user testing results. During our interview, I did a couple of queries and noticed some recent additions to the main Ask site that had migrated over from AskX. I asked Michael where they were with that.

We’re still in testing with that and it will roll out. We have decided because of a lot of the user experience metrics that we’re getting from the beta test that we’re going to go for it. We have decided to move the full experience over from the Ask X experience. So that will happen sometime this year, we don’t know exactly when. We just, a couple of days ago, really decided we’ve seen enough and we’re pretty excited about that. Google has a really great user experience going, and Yahoo does too, but they have so many different levers that move so much revenue and traffic and experience metrics that I think it’s harder for them to take chances and to move things around and get buy-offs, at a bureaucratic level.

To some extent, we see ourselves as having permission and a responsibility to really innovate on the user experience. It’s definitely a good time for us because we have such great support from IAC and they’re very much invested in us improving the user experience and getting more traffic and frequency and taking market share. They’re ready to very much invest in that. So we don’t need to cram the page with sponsored links. It’s mostly a transitional time when we’re getting people to reconsider the brand and the search engine as a full keyword based, everyday search engine that has lots to offer. There are so many things that, in an informed way, we can make changes on, relative to our competitors.

So, in the short term, what does that mean for the presence of sponsored ads on Ask? Will we be seeing more, less or about the same?

Just to fit along with the logic of Eye Tracking II (Enquiro’s second eye tracking study), those ads are not a delineated part of the user experience for the end user and they’re relevance and their frequency can color the perception of the rest of the page and especially the organic listings below them. Right now, as I said, we’re very much focusing on improved user experience and building frequency and retention of customers, which all the companies are, I’m sure. But we’re really being cautious with the ads and getting them there when they’re appropriate and, as best we can, adjust them over time, so that when they’re there, they’re going to valuable for the user and for the vendor.

I couldn’t help bring up Jeeves’ sordid past when it came to sponsored ads, knowing that Michael would be happy to rise to the occasion and explain his dilemma.

Way before we got acquired by IAC we knew that (we were showing too many ads). We test like other engines would. We test lots of different ad configurations and presentations and things like that but definitely you want to balance that. Way before we got acquired we realized that there’s one thing that’s kind of fun about making the quarter and blowing through it a little bit and then there’s another thing about eroding customers. And definitely there’s a lifetime value that can be gained by giving people what you know is a better user experience over time, so once we did become part of the IAC family, we brought them up to speed with the results that we were finding that were pointing to taking that road and they’ve very much been in support of it. And, of course, their revenue is spread amongst a lot of different pieces of online and offline business so their ability to absorb it is probably more flexible than ours was as a stand alone company.

When I asked whether, as part of the IAC family, we can expect to see the folding in of more of the siloed content on the main site page, Michael indicated that this is path they need to approach cautiously.

Maybe the most powerful thing about the internet is that you as an individual now have a very empowered position relative to other producers of information, other businesses where you can consume a bunch of different points of view, a bunch of different opportunities to do business. You can get the lowest price and read reviews that the company itself hasn’t sanctioned, and have access to your peer network and to your social networks. Search, like the internet, becomes, and it necessarily needs to be, a proxy for that neutral, unbiased view of all the information that’s available.

The way we approached AskCity was a great example of this. We had leveraged a lot of CitySearch data but at the same time, we know that when people go out and want to see reviews, they want to see reviews from AOL Neighborhoods, they want to see reviews from Yelp and they want to see reviews from all these other points of view too so we go and scrape all those and fold them into the CitySearch stuff. We give access to all those results that come up on AskCity. If they’re, for instance, at a restaurant, you can get OpenTable reviews and you can get movie reservations through Fandango and other things like that. Those companies have nothing to do with IAC. Those decisions were borne from user needs and from us looking as individuals in particular urban areas, and asking “Hey, what would I want to come up?” So we’re going to be very balanced with being at the right time. We know from previous experience from AOL that the walled garden thing doesn’t work. It’s just not what people expect from search and not what they expect from the internet, so that lesson’s been learned. I don’t know how much it would be different if we had some dominant market share over search, but that’s even more reason for us to be appealing to as wide a population as possible.

Of course, with personalization looming on the horizon, I had to ask Michael about Ask’s plans for increasing relevance and disambiguating intent. It appears they’re putting their eggs in a basket called “Edison.”

The other major thing that’s going on right now is that we have fully revamped how we’re taking this. We developed Direct Hit late 90’s technology. And then the Teoma technology we acquired. And really, it’s not that we’re taking those to the next level, we got all of that stuff together and over the past three years, we’ve been saying, “Okay, what do we have and what’s unique and differentiated?” So there’s a lot of great user behavior data that Direct Hit understands. We have a whole variety of things there and that’s unlocked, that’s across all the people coming in and out over time but not any personally identifiable type of stuff. And then there’s the Teoma stuff, which is good at seeing communities on the web and then expertise within the communities and how communities relate.

So right now, even though we have personalization stuff and My Stuff and other things that are coming up, we’re investing a lot more in the next version of the algorithm and the infrastructure for us to grow what we call Edison. And we started talking about that a week ago, since AG (Apostolos Gerasoulis) mentioned it, so that across a lot of user data it understands a lot about the context from the user intention side and then, because we’re constantly capturing the biology of the web and its communities and how they’re related, we then matching them to the intention and the map of the web as it stands and the blogosphere as it stands and other domains as they stand. Our Zoom product, which is now on the left under the search box in the AskX experience and it’s on the right on the live site, is the big area that we’re going to more passively offer people different paths. If you search for U2, it’s going to tend to bring up news, and product results, and video results and images, and a Smart Answer at the top of the page. It’s also going to know that there’s U2 as the entity, the music band and therefore search the blogosphere but just search within music blogs. So what it’s doing, over time, is trying to give a personalized experience that’s informed by lots of behavior and trying to capture the structure of the web.

I wrapped up by asking Michael where Ask would be in two years if he had his way.

We’d definitely have significantly more than 10% market share. My point of view from dealing with the user experience is that I’ve been proud of the work that we’ve done and I really think that we’ve been very focused and innovative with a very talented team here. We’re really hoping that as we look at the rest of the year and we put out Edison and the AskX experience, that we become recognized for taking chances and presenting the user experience in a differentiated way that people have to respond to us in the market and start adopting some of the things that we’re doing. Because of the amount of revenue that Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are dealing with on the search side, they often get a lot of press but our hope is really to take share and to hopefully have a user experience that informs and improves the user experience of our competitors.

In looking at the recent changes on the Ask and AskX interface, it appears that Michael’s on the right track. Although the Microsoft/Yahoo rumors appear to be just that for now, if the big three ever consolidate into two, I believe Ask has a real shot to pick up market share. Their biggest challenge is not the interface, but the back end infrastructure of their engine. The combination of Teoma and DirectHit technology have kept them in the ball game up to now, but if Google hits a relevancy home run with true personalization, the changes envisioned in Edison, although a significant step forward, might not be enough to keep them in the game. I’ve always said that one of the engines had to make a significant move to up the ante in the search game, but I didn’t think it would be Google. However, with their aggressive pursuit of personalization, Google is planning the same order of magnitude leap in relevancy performance that first characterized their entry into the search space. And because this is literally powered by Google’s own users, it’s very tough for a competitor to match that.

But personalization will take time, and of the 4 major properties, Ask is by far the most innovative in interface experimentation. In the short term, or in the case of Google striking out with personalization, Michael’s wish just may come true.

I’ve posted a full transcription of my conversation with Michael on my blog.

Gord Hotchkiss is CEO of Enquiro, a search marketing firm that produces search engine user eye tracking studies and other research. The Just Behave column appears Fridays at Search Engine Land.

Last weekend was apparently a big weekend when it came to weddings and search. Both big names in search got hitched — Gary Price and Sergey Brin. No, not to each other (not that there would be anything wrong with that, of course!).

ResourceShelf editor and Ask.com search evangelist Gary Price tied the knot near Chicago last week. I, Barry Schwartz and Chris Sherman from Search Engine Land all had the great pleasure to attend and witness Gary and Lisa Cohen getting married. Mazel Tov! Ask.com has pictures and video over here.

Because of our close relationship with Gary, none of the Search Engine Land gang was able to make last weekend’s wedding of Google cofounder Sergey Brin to Anne Wojcicki. OK, we weren’t invited. But we don’t feel bad — few apparently were to the stealth wedding in the Bahamas.

Via Valleywag, the Washington Post has a short write-up here. Now you know why Sergey wasn’t at this week’s shareholder’s meeting, eh? Unlike Gary and Ask, Google has no pictures of the couple up. Valleywag does have a pre-wedding picture of the couple here. Congrats to both!