Here’s a brief recent history of Ask:

• July 1999: Ask Jeeves goes public
• March 2005: IAC buys Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion
• February 2006: Jeeves the Butler goes into retirement
• April 2006: Steve Berkowitz, head of Ask.com, leaves to join Microsoft. Jim Lazone named CEO of Ask
• June 2007: Lanzone launches innovative Ask 3D UI, which other engines copy to varying degrees
• January 2008: Lanzone is out as Ask CEO, Jim Safka replaces him but later leaves
• April 2009: Jeeves the Butler returns in the UK
• July 2009: Doug Leeds takes over as CEO of Ask
• July 2010: Ask embraces “social search” (Q&A) and establishes current strategy

Ask has a relatively stable following at about 3 percent of overall search volume.

Current Ask CEO Doug Leeds says the following about where the company is going:

During the next few years, Ask will increasingly be able to deliver answers and information based on what you tell us about who you are, where you are and what you’re doing. Factoring in this kind of context will mean things like:

— The ability to control the social graph around your Q&A behavior, such as routing and filtering questions and answers based on people you know and your relationships with them.

— Asking questions about a specific location, browsing questions and answers from people nearby, directing specific questions to people near you or people who visit the places you frequent most.

The underpinning of this, naturally, is mobile and this is an area Ask will continue to tackle aggressively over the next few years:  a growing suite of mobile apps designed to accommodate a variety of use cases, ubiquity on all mobile platforms and operating systems, and more integration and transparency with third party developers. We want to be your de facto mobile Q&A experience. That’s what we’re aiming toward.

While Ask still has a meaningful following and usage it’s struggling to overcome insiders’ perceptions that it is no longer relevant in search. That’s not something that regular users care about however. But if mobile is the focus for the future — something consumers do care about — Ask really needs to execute at an unprecedented level.

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• Barry Diller No Longer CEO Of IAC, Ask.com
• Diller: Ask.com Was The Little Search Engine That Couldn’t
• Obit: A West Coast Digerati Deadpools Ask.com
• Ask Relaunches: Now “Ask 3D”

The Need, Or Not, To Crawl

Search engines like Google and Bing try to have answers to anything someone might search for by “crawling” the web, making copies of all the pages they find and storing them in a searchable database, or index. Ask has done the same thing since around 2001, when it acquired the Teoma search engine.

Crawling helps ensure that you have a comprehensive index. However, crawling is an expensive job — as is maintaining ranking algorithms, the systems that sift through the billions of pages stored in an index to select the best ones in response to a search.

For Ask, it no longer makes sense to maintain that technology. Earlier this year, the company shifted from trying to compete directly with Google and Bing as an all-purpose search destination to instead being a place where people can do Q&A search (see Ask Comes Full Circle With “Q&A” Offering). Running its own comprehensive web search system wasn’t helping with that mission.

“In some ways, we built a hammer and were looking for nails. We realized to the extent that they were doing general web search, our flavor of web search and the other favors out there, we weren’t adding much using our own technology,” Ask.com president Doug Leeds told me.

Outsourcing For Search

Ask will continue to use its web crawling technology, but far more selectively. Rather than trying to find everything from across the web, the crawling will be much more focused around sites that provide answers to questions people search for at the service. Ask will also continue to maintain its own news search service, both through crawling and pulling in news feeds.

Of course, Ask doesn’t want to be in a position where if someone does a search, they come up empty if Ask’s own database of answers has nothing. So the company will outsource for the comprehensive web search matches that it used to gather itself.

Which company will provide those results? Leeds said he’s not allowed to say. Almost certainly, it’s Google. Ask already has a deal with Google through 2012 to carry some of Google’s ads. There have also been reports that Ask has tested using Google’s results in the past, though Ask has never confirmed these and at one point, flat out denied it.

The outsourcing also means layoffs. Leeds said Ask will consolidate its operations to Oakland, California. It has about 60 people focused on search technology in Edison, New Jersey. About 1/3 of these will be offered relocation, with the remainder let go. It also has about another 60 based in China, where everyone is being laid off.

Postscript: I asked Google and was told:

We cannot comment on our partnership with Ask.  Ask has been a long standing partner of Google and we look forward to continue working with them in the future.

I also asked Bing if they were powering Ask and was told that it had “nothing to share on this.”

That was odd. I see no reason for Bing to clarify that they are not powering Ask. Heck, I see no reason for Google not to confirm it, other than perhaps it doesn’t want to attract attention that overall, it has even more share of the US search market than might be known (only about 3% more, but still).

Switching Over

When does the technology switchover happen? Leeds said that Ask has been testing using its search partner’s results for some time, and there’s no actual “on/off” switch that will be flipped for its own technology. Instead, Ask will blend results together, as it makes sense initially. Over time, more of the partner’s results will show.

“I don’t think you’re going to see any particular difference in our results versus tomorrow or next week.”

Earlier this year, Ask also brought back its Teoma web site, which featured “pure” search results from Ask’s Teoma search technology. Leeds said the company hasn’t decided what to do with the site yet.

Moving On With Q&A

Ask marks the second major search engine this year to give up its own search technology. Yahoo did so earlier this year, outsourcing to Bing in August. I’m sad that we’ve lost yet another search “voice,” though the launch of Blekko last month provides some optimism, on that front.

I’ve been pretty dubious about Yahoo’s chances of success in maintaining search market share. Major players that have given up their own search technology typically haven’t stayed in the majors. Yahoo has argued that search is just a “chip” like that in a computer — and what sells computers isn’t the chip inside but the overall experience. We’ll see if that metaphor plays out. I remain doubtful.

I was also pretty dubious about Ask’s future way back in 2008, when it had a leadership change and wasn’t clear about what its next move would be. As a major search player, I think that remains true. Ask isn’t going to build itself into a Google-killer, much less a Bing-killer. Barry Diller, CEO of IAC which owns Ask, recently admitted as much himself.

Over at Bloomberg, Brad Stone has a more detailed look today’s move by Ask from a business perspective, IAC’s Diller Surrenders to Google Juggernaut, Ends Ask.com Search Effort.

As a Q&A service, Ask may have some potential. Certainly it plays to a niche, and one that it still is known for despite having, until recently, really been out of the Q&A world for years. Since the reemphasis on question answering, Leeds said the service has gone from 30% to 60% of questions being answered.

Leeds also provided some stats from internal brand surveys that have been done. In one, Ask ranked well ahead of Google as being thought of as a place to get questions answered (46% to 27%):

In another, asking questions was a top reason for the most recent search someone did at Ask (20%) versus looking for information about a planned purchase at Bing (12%), Google (11%) or Yahoo (9%):

“No one is taking the Q&A communities and blending with Q&A search,” Leeds said. “My charge to people at Ask is ‘Great, let’s build it’.”

Of course, one of the big challenges I see in the Q&A space is the incredibly poor answers that some of them provide. I’ll be doing a future piece on this, but it’s common to get incorrect answers or no answers at all. It’s somewhat alarming, actually, how much “answer farm” content is polluting the results I find at places like Google and Bing.

Leeds also talked about former Ask CEO Jim Lanzone being right about focusing on retention and loyalty of Ask’s existing base — and it is a base, he says, that wants Q&A.

“If we increase our frequency and retention of existing users, that’s a huge market opportunity for us,” Leeds said. “The product they want, and they’re telling us they want, is to get more answers to their questions.”

If you look his Linkedin profile you will see his current position is no longer being at Ask.com. Here is a screen shot:

Apostolos has been the force behind all the search technology deployed at Ask.com for the past years. Him leaving is another major let down for the future of Ask.com’s core search technology. Most of you know my thoughts on Ask.com’s focus or lack-there-of, for when it comes to search.

Like I said above, this is a significant change for Ask.com. Not only was he the lead of all search at Ask.com and the founder of the technology, he was also used in several Ask.com commercials. I don’t believe the commercials were a huge success, just like the others, but clearly, Apostolos was an important part of Ask.com.

Personally, I was a huge fan of Apostolos, as I was of Jim Lanzone, Ask.com’s former CEO.

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.

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.”

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!

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.

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.”

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.