Search Engine Land » Ask: General

Happy Thanksgiving Logos From Google, Yahoo, Bing & More

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:19:11 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Below is a collection of the 2011 Thanksgiving logos and themes from the search engine industry. Including Google’s logo , which went live a couple days ago, and logos from Yahoo, Bing, Dogpile, Ask.com, and others.

Today will be a light coverage schedule on Search Engine Land. Enjoy the day and the time with family and friends!

Google:

Yahoo:

Bing:

Ask.com:

Dogpile:

Related Logos:

Google’s Halloween Logo Made Up Of 6,000 Pounds Of Pumpkins

Barry Schwartz — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:08:16 +0000

There is a special Google logo on Google for Halloween today, the logo is a video of Google’s Doodle team carving the Google logo out of huge pumpkins. One of the pumpkins 1,298 pounds, and many of the others are over 1,000 pounds.

Here is the video of the Google logo in action:

Here is a video of the Google Doodle team making the logo:

Google is not the only one with an animated logo for Halloween. Both Bing and Yahoo have animated logos or themes:

Yahoo:

Bing:

Ask.com:

Dogpile:

For more logos from the search industry, see my other post over here.

Ask.com Returns To TV With Spot Emphasizing Q&A

Greg Sterling — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:33:32 +0000

Ask.com has a long history in TV advertising; some of it has been entertaining and some of it controversial. But the IAC-owned search engine was on a TV hiatus of sorts during the past couple of years. Now, according to AdWeek, the company is running new TV ads in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The ads reportedly focus on Ask’s more recent positioning as a Q&A engine:

The 15-second commercials emphasize the company’s new focus on fact-based answers to questions posed in everyday language, showing people asking things like “Where can I watch TV online for free?” and “Does speed dating really work?”

Q&A is a relatively hot area these days, though most of the products in the market face various challenges, such as quality (Yahoo Answers), mainstream appeal and scalability (Quora) or utility (Opinionaided). And Facebook Questions hasn’t developed into the “killer app” I originally thought it would.

Ask’s current market share, according to comScore, is 3 percent. It seems to have stabilized in recent months after a period of decline.

We were unable to find the particular spot discussed in the AdWeek article. So here are several of Ask’s previous TV campaigns for your viewing pleasure.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Postscript: Here’s the commercial referenced in the AdWeek story (courtesy of Ask):

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Ask.com Opens Up Its Human Q&A Community, Steps Further Away From Search

Matt McGee — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:17:04 +0000

After more than a year in beta, Ask.com today opened the doors on its community-based question-and-answer product. It positions Ask as much less search-oriented, and much more Q&A based — not unlike its original incarnation in the 1990s.

The Q&A site had been available in beta to a limited number of users since last July (2010) when Ask began to transition from search to Q&A. As you’ll see on the third screenshot below, Ask says it has more than 344,000 people already in the Q&A community.

At the time of the initial announcement last summer, the Ask.com homepage still had a search bar, but a “Question of the Day” and a short list of “Popular Questions” was added.

(Ask.com homepage, July 27, 2010)

Today, the home page still has that “Question of the Day,” but several human-powered Q&A sets show below it along with a box letting users add new answers right from the home page. The old “Search” button now says “Ask,” and the Image/News/Local and other search options have been moved from the top menu bar to a “Search Tools” area in the right column.

(Ask.com homepage, September 1, 2011)

Search has clearly been minimized with the new homepage. The top navigation now features “Ask People” as prominently as “Search the Web.”

The “Ask” button on the homepage actually works like a search button, but the search results page goes out of its way to promote the Q&A aspects of Ask.com.

Ask’s new focus is fully on display when you switch over to the “Ask People” tab. That’s where you get an experience that will be familiar to most anyone who’s ever spent time on a Q&A site.

Yahoo Answers is the 800-lb. gorilla among answers sites, and Quora has gained a lot of momentum in the past year. There’s also Facebook Questions, Answers.com and a host of other options for people looking for human — not algorithmic — answers to their questions and queries. And don’t forget that Google bought Aardvark about 18 months ago and there’s been speculation that it signaled Google’s interest in getting back into the Q&A space. (Then again, Aardvark has remained in Google Labs since the purchase, and everything in Labs is currently in a state of uncertainty.)

All of which is to say that, despite Ask’s pedigree in Q&A, there’s no guarantee it’ll do better there than it has in search.

(Tip via WSJ.)

Ask.com Celebrates 15th Birthday

Greg Sterling — Tue, 10 May 2011 10:55:55 +0000

Ask.com the social search/Q&A engine is 15 years old. Founded in 1996 as Ask Jeeves by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen the company has launched a special social site to celebrate its birthday and review events of the past 15 years — mylast15.com.

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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Google’s 2011 Mother’s Day Logo & More Logos

Barry Schwartz — Sun, 08 May 2011 14:43:22 +0000

Today is Mother’s Day in the United States and many many other countries and for the special day, Google and the other search engines have special logos and themes up. The logos and themes are to honor our Mothers for all they have done for us.

Below is a listing of the logos from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com and other search engines that have special logos up for Mother’s Day.

More Fun Google Logos:

Google’s Interactive Earth Day Logo

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:10:25 +0000

Today on Google’s home page is a special interactive Google logo for Earth Day. Earth Day this year falls out on Good Friday and for the special day, Google made a fun, animated and interactive Google logo.

Ironically, it seems as if you have Pandas playing (see the Google Panda update), the logo also has birds flying, fish swimming, lions sleeping, penguins sledding and much more. Here is a video me interacting with the Google logo.

Google was not the only search company celebrating Earth Day with a special logo, so is Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, AOL and others. Here they are:

Yahoo:

Bing:

Ask.com:

AOL:

Search Engine Roundtable:

Related Stories:

St. Patrick’s Day Logo Not On Google.com

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:03:33 +0000

This is the first time in years that Google does not have a St. Patrick’s Day logo on the Google.com home page. Google does have a special logo on Google Ireland but not on Google.com.

Here is the Google St. Patrick’s Day logo on Google Ireland:

I have a feeling Google did not post it globally because of the Japanse crisis but I do not have that confirmed as of yet.

Interestingly enough, Yahoo.com is also missing the St. Patrick’s Day logo. Only those in the Ireland region will see an animated logo. Here it is:

Bing, Ask.com, Dogpile, DuckDuckGo and some others have logos for the special day. Here they are:

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: For those who really care, I checked my database of Google Logos (yes, I keep such a thing), and here’s the rundown on Google and St. Patrick’s Day logos:

1999: No logo
2000 through 2002: Special logo posted
2003: No logo
2004 through 2010: Special logo posted
2011: No logo

Google first started posting logos in September 1998, so that year doesn’t count. Since then, it has celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with a special logo 10 out of 13 occasions, or 77% of the time.

For more stats like that, see my past post:

Those Special Google Logos, Sliced & Diced, Over The Years

Ask Launches Local Conversations iPhone App

Greg Sterling — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:41:19 +0000

Ask.com noticed some interesting behavior happening on its Q&A iPhone application. People were trying to have “conversations” in the comments area of the app, according to Ask’s Jason Rupp. Much of that chat activity was focused on particular locations.

But Ask’s Q&A app wasn’t intended to support full-blown conversations. Cut to several months later and, just in time for the SXSW conference, Ask is launching a new app focused on local conversations. It’s called Ask Around.

Location awareness on the phone immediately puts people into the middle of a local conversation. All comments are public by default so you chat with people around you, whether you know them or not. The geographic radius of the conversation can be adjusted by a slider on the app, up to 15 miles. So you can see what’s being said immediately around you or more broadly on the metro level.

People outside the designated area cannot participate directly in conversations but they can “listen” in on conversations wherever they may be happening. For example, you could be in LA and listen to conversations happening at or around the Metropolitan Museum of Art or at a particular event or in Manhattan more broadly. This is one of the most intriguing dimensions of the user experience.

There are obvious parallels here to Twitter and group chat applications. But the Ask app is specifically designed for conversations around specific places (yobongo is another that does this). The app also allows users to save locations and then come back and later follow conversations in a particular area.

You don’t follow people, you follow places.

Ask said that it isn’t monetizing the app in any way at this point, just “putting it out there” to see whether and how people interact with it. If it doesn’t fly Ask will retire the app. However there’s also a possibility that the company could have a real hit on its hands.

Click here to view the embedded video.

New Year’s Eve & Day 2011 Logos From Google & Others

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:52:11 +0000

Happy New Year’s Eve everyone, except for you in the Australian region, where it is New Year’s Day! On behalf of the Search Engine Land team, we wanted to wish you all a happy and healthy 2011!

As like in the past years, the search engines have special logos up for the New Years. Below are images of those logos from the 2011 search celebration.

Google’s Logo:

Yahoo’s Logo:

Bing’s Logo:

Ask.com’s Logo:

Baidu’s Logo:

Sogou’s Logo:

Crea8site Forums Logo (a SEO forum):

Search Engine Roundtable’s Logo:

Related Entries: