I was walking through the expo hall, which I rarely do, and I spotted at the Ask.com booth this sign.

You read that? “My company just gave up on search. Where do I work now” and then the URL at the bottom. That is Ask.com being funny and then trying to pick up Yahoo Search employees. I am also being told that they are giving away bars of chocolate that say the same line.

Yea, Yahoo did give up on search but I also personally believe Ask.com has also given up on search.

If you visit Ask.com today, you will see what looks like a huge ad, in form of what is called (I believe) a skin ad, engulfing the home page. The ad, at least to me, shows a sign of desperation for Ask.com to raise ad dollars. While Google would rarely ever show an ad, even a text ad, for a third-party on their home page, Ask.com makes a full page ad. At the same time, the ad is cool in that many of the mouse hovers lead to search results, with Ask.com’s Smart Answers, similar to how Live.com does hotspots.

Here is a picture:

I am curious on your take. Do you like these types of ads or do you think this shows signs of weakness from Ask.com?

Postscript: Here is Ask.com’s response:

Ask is running a unique, two-day homepage takeover with FOX studios to promote the new blockbuster family film – “Night at the Museum 2” (the first movie got almost $575 mm in WW box office sales). Contrary to what has been written about this feature – it is not an ad. It’s much more – it’s a partnership between Ask and FOX. It’s ‘infotainment’. It’s a product integration project. Ask.com is actually featured in the movie itself, and we in turn are featuring the movie (and trailer) on the Ask homepage in a visually robust and media-rich format..

Ask is doing this for several reasons. First, we know our users love a homepage that is not just ‘white space’, but offers something more interesting and compelling. Second, NM2 is also a movie about historical characters and learning – and aligns with Ask’s focus on content that is of great interest to families and kids – and fun, too. Third, the homepage is not static – it comes alive in a “rollover” or “hotspot” format when you mouse over the movie’s historical icons and legends – like Amelia Earhart, General Custer and Sacagawea, and allows user to experience Ask’s robust search results through our proprietary “Smart Answers” offering. (When you click on a character, you get Ask’s Smart Answer on said historical icon). In that sense, the homepage takeover is actually an introduction to the Ask search experience – to online discovery and exploration – and in no way detracts from, or inhibits, the usual Ask search process.

Fourth, its not the first time we’ve done this: in 2008, Ask did a promo for the James Bond movie “Quantum of Solace”, that allows users to get a special ‘skin’ that can replace their homepage. Very popular. We also have used the homepage takeover experience to promote important non-profit causes and introduce our users to the greater good that can come from the search experience; that took place when we had a partnership late last year for “Free the Children”, and again in April for Autism Awareness month with “Autism Speaks” – both incredibly successful in terms of interest, feedback, and click-thrus. From time to time, we also feature a ‘peel’ in the upper left-hand corner of the homepage to bring a unique offering (and deals!) from a partner to the attention of our users – as we did in February with a major florist for Valentines Day.

It’s also useful to note that Ask – like many other search engines – has used homepages to celebrate national (and international) holidays – and to promote awareness of how to help victims of a major disaster, such as we did last June when we used the Ask homepage to help educate users about the quake news and relief efforts. In addition, when we launched our partnership with NASCAR early this year, we had a NASCAR-themed homepage for a week – and then converted that to a ‘skin’ that is a choice for consumers to use to this day. And they do.

More than anything, we know that allowing users to see and experience something other than a ‘usual’ homepage excites and captivates them, which is why our ‘skins’ feature is so popular and desired. It also creates strong ‘lifetime value’ in users, which is such a critical part of brand presence and growing our share of market. And also adds to positive trends in frequency and retention.

Finally, if online companies don’t evolve smartly to give users new and compelling features, and also keep in-line with major cultural events and causes, then they themselves run the real risk of actually becoming a museum piece in the Smithsonian – instead of simply featuring it to the excitement of their users on their homepage or portal.

It has been well over three years since Ask.com has retired Jeeves. Ever since then, many searchers and internet users have asked for his return. Today, Jeeves has come out of retirement, at least in the UK, where he returns as the brand behind the search engine. Visiting uk.ask.com or any of the URLs should now give you the revitalized Jeeves character, when accessed within the UK.

The new character has been transformed into a 3D icon, replacing its 2D counterpart. The 3D version will be found on the Ask UK home page and on the right hand side of the search results. The character will offer searchers additional search options, interact with the searcher on their query and more. When I asked for more specifics, Ask’s reply was, “you will want to wait and see.”

Cesar Mascaraque, managing director of Ask Jeeves Europe and former Googler, shared a YouGov poll, where Ask polled their UK users and found that Jeeves had 83% brand awareness, even after retiring Jeeves three years ago. Compare that to Ask.com’s 72% awareness, and the Ask team felt it was the right move to make, bringing back Jeeves in the UK.

“Our users have emphatically told us that they find Jeeves enhances their search experience – adding character to what can otherwise be a very functional experience. They see Jeeves as approachable and trustworthy and, above all, helpful,” Mascaraque said.

Mascaraque explained that Ask focused hard on improving their core search over the past year. Mascaraque said they have achieved on that level (I still disagree), but they needed to also focus on the perception of the search engine.

The Ask UK team will backup the new 3D Jeeves character with a major marketing and PR push. The marketing effort will be broken into two phases:

1. Initial messaging that Jeeves is back and with a lot more answers
2. Later, a much more targeted approach to buying ads that are contextually relevant to what the user is doing. For example, if someone’s watching a home improvement TV show, the ad that shows might have a question related to home improvement

The campaign will be inclusive of TV ads, radio ads, print ads and online ads. Plus, Ask UK will create a Facebook fan page and Twitter account to continue the message in the social media space.

I asked if bringing back Jeeves is proof that Ask is going back to their 1996 roots? The obvious reply was no, the new Jeeves character is revitalized, quicker, smarter and should be perceived as better.

So why only bring Jeeves back in the UK? Mascaraque explained that the polls they ran in the UK showed a strong desire for Jeeves to make a come back. The same desire was not found in the US, although Ask admitted they did not run similar polls in the US. Nicholas Graham, spokesperson for Ask.com in the US, did remind that you can bring Jeeves back in the US by typing in askjeeves.com into your browser. Mascaraque also added that Jeeves is more of a British character than a US character.

Instead in the US, Ask has been building on its partnership with NASCAR through a series of television ads that in some ways are the opposite of the Ask UK approach. Rather than focusing on a refined butler, these ads revolve around the “Ray family” which asks questions such as if you can drink milk after its expiration date. Said Graham:

“The questions are articulated by the Ray family, our NASCAR fan family that viewers see during race day programming on FOX.  Since the Rays have non-NASCAR questions in their lives, we’re also featuring them beyond so-called ‘race car programming’, on networks and programs that index well against the NASCAR fan audience like Sci Fi, USA and NHL on NBC. The campaign started in mid-February, and we’re on 18 different networks — including AMC, FX, National Geographic Channel, MLB Network, and NFL Network.”

Here’s one of the ads

Beyond the traditional TV ad spots, Ask has also been running “crawl” ads that appear during shows such as on National Geographic, during NASCAR events and Major League Baseball:

Will we ever see Jeeves make a full return to the US market? I personally believe we will. The NASCAR season is over sometime in November, and although I don’t know if there is a specific time period for the NASCAR and Ask.com partnership, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jeeves make a comeback in the US market in early 2010.

Postscript: Jeeves now has his Facebook page and Twitter account up, as noted by Mashable. Also see related coverage on Techmeme.

Postscript 2: If you’re looking for the other four ads that I’d posted with Ask.com’s permission to YouTube, they’re gone. About a month after this story went up, Ask’s ad agency filed takedown requests with YouTube. Ask didn’t know this happened, so went back to figure out what was going on. Ask learned they only have the rights to show the single ad above for an unlimited time (the crawl ads are also unlimited). So, Hanft Raboy & Partners, I hope you’re happy.

Since Hanft Raboy & Gang kind of irked me, I figured I should learn more about the agency. Ironically for a company working with a search engine, they seem clueless to SEO. They’ve got an all-Flash site that’s pretty uncrawlable. This is what you get when you search for them:

“Get Flash,” now there’s a nice creative message.

I’d link to the page that explains what they do, but — given that it’s all in Flash — I can’t. But I especially loved this part:

Our work combines deep cultural and consumer insights with a rare understanding of business realities. Our clients don’t just work with us, they experience us.

Here’s a business reality. You probably kind of tick off your clients if, after they work really hard to get some attention for those ads you produced for them, later find out you’ve gone out without checking with them first to yank them off the web. I mean, it was probably pretty hard to click from the links in those videos that led to this story, see that Ask was quoted, see that they had given me permission to post them and think hmm, maybe we should talk to someone before filing some time-wasting takedown requests.

I get that there might be issues that prevent these ads from being posted online, such as the need to pay additional fees to the actors. Then again, maybe they’re aren’t any. And if not, another business reality is allowing the ads to stay up with the agency’s own permission might have been a smart move.

Oh, and another business reality is that a lot of people these days interact with web sites via search. I know you’re all into the creative and want to make people “nervous enough to be challenged” with your ads, as your What We Do page says. But you might want to demonstrate some basic awareness of one of the primary ways consumers interact with brands on the web — through search.

If you visit Ask.com today, you may notice that they have ads for their sister sites. Here is a picture of Ask.com with a Match.com ad, an IAC property.

Currently, Ask.com is the only “search engine” to have display ads on their search home page. I’ll leave my negative thoughts to myself this time.

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!

Ask.com — saying it plans to compete against the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft — has announced a new “Super Verticals” strategy to take on its much larger rivals. These are specialized search engines that provide direct answers to factual questions. First off the mark? A NASCAR search engine. And yes, Ask also becomes the official search engine of NASCAR.

You won’t find the NASCAR search engine from Ask.com available yet. It will be released in conjunction with the Daytona 500 race on February 15, just part of an overall marketing plan that Ask hopes will attract NASCAR fans and keep them searching with Ask.

“There are clear marketing channels to reach NASCAR fans,” said Ask.com CEO Jim Safka. “If you’re going to do a NASCAR search, there’s only one place to go. If we can get large numbers of them to try, they’ll see we’re heads and shoulders above the others.”

The NASCAR search is the first of about a dozen other vertical search engines that Ask.com plans to roll out this year, Safka said. He wouldn’t itemize what these “super verticals,” as he called them, will be. But he said to expect more sports search engines along with other topics. The hope is that people will come for a particular topic but stick around to do broader searches.

“We’re going to systematically attack verticals, so by the time the year is over, people we reach will know that Ask is the best search engine on the planet when you have a search question in a particular category,” Safka said.

We’ll see. Vertical search engines have long been seen as a way that “newcomers” or others could break searchers out of the Google habit. But despite this, they haven’t seemed to help any of Google’s major rivals. For example, Microsoft pushed out a health search engine over a year ago; the Farecast travel search engine it bought last year was also positioned as a key vertical in the battle against Google. Neither has produced any noticeable gain for Microsoft.

Ask’s plan differs in partnering with a group that has potentially a dedicated audience for its particular searches. That marketing might help. Ask will power searches at NASCAR.com. It will sponsor a car in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Ask is also exploring other marketing opportunities with NASCAR.

Then again, Northern Light’s partnership with NASCAR back in 2000 didn’t help that search engine build any significant consumer search marketshare. Of course, Northern Light didn’t also offer a dedicated NASCAR search engine. Maybe that will help Ask.

Ask’s new vertical is powered by extracting information from web pages across the web and from databases of information. Ask recently highlighted the technology used behind the scenes for this along with names and acronyms like DADS (Direct Answers From Databases), DAFS (Direct Answers From Search) and AnswerFarm. But other search engines do similar things, including places like Google and Hakia.

As I said, the NASCAR search isn’t live yet. For a taste of other Ask verticals out there now, the recipe search is interesting — though hard to find. Do a search on Ask, then click on “More” under the search box to select recipes (TV Listings and Events are among others offered). Of course, Google also offers a little known recipe search engine with far more extensive refining options than Ask currently provides (Ask says its service will be beefed up in the near future).

Since the ultimate goal is to get people using Ask for general searches, how are things on that front? Safka is adamant that Ask fully intends to compete in the general search space and has spent the past year increasing its speed, comprehensiveness, relevancy and freshness.

Unfortunately, there are no commonly-accepted metrics to prove this. Ask might be on par with the rest, better or worse. It’s hard to know.

I do know that right now, Ask doesn’t seem very fresh. Do a search, then click on the “cache” link for any page listed. Time after time, I can see that these cached copies are dated in mid-November. That should mean that the last time Ask visited these pages was weeks ago. For example, the cached copy of CNN.com’s home page is dated November 18, 2008. If that’s the last time Ask visited that site, it’s pretty stale (both Google and Yahoo last visited CNN.com today; Microsoft two days ago).

I also had a pretty dim view of Ask’s recent arbitrage activity (see Ask.com Plays The Google AdWords Arbitrage Game), which it dismissed as an oversight, despite having run for months. To me, that was a further sign of what I wrote last March, that Ask was pretty much out of it as a major search engine and headed down the path into the secondary market (see Obit: A West Coast Digerati Deadpools Ask.com).

Since that time, Ask has been diligently trying to win back the support of blog influencers (see Lisa Barone’s My Thoughts On Ask.com & Core Search and Barry Schwartz’s Sorry, Ask.com — I Still Don’t Think You’re Focused On Core Search). Safka’s message when I spoke with him today remained along the same lines — we matter, we care about search, and we’re planning a smart game to win back searchers.

As I said before, we’ll see. It will take a lot more than words for Ask to prove it’s still in the game. And while a NASCAR partnership might be smart, it continues to still do dumb things like this:

Those are the ads that appear at the bottom for a search on cars. Notice how there are five within a shaded box marked “Sponsored Results,” then underneath that is another ad outside the box. Why’s it outside the box?

My assumption is that Ask hopes some searchers will miss that it is an ad, click on it and generate revenue. Yes, it does have a “sponsored results” label, keeping with FTC guidelines for search ads. But those guidelines also urge that paid listings be separated or clearly delineated from the unpaid results. Putting them in a box does this; leaving one out makes no sense, other than to confuse the searcher. And that’s not a good thing for a search engine to be doing when it’s trying to rebuild its reputation.

Try it, go to askjeeves.com, notice how it redirects you to ask.com and then shows you the old Jeeves character.

Is Jeeves back?

Don’t you remember? Ask.com retired Jeeves back in February of 2006. Now, two and half years later, they are bringing Jeeves back? Is it possible?

Last signs of Jeeves showed he was in the adult entertainment business (joking), possibly because Ask.com’s search technology has been looking a bit shaky, to say the least.

All in all, it does indeed seem like Ask.com is going back to 1996 and maybe this just helps us prove it?

I will email Ask.com’s PR team for a comment on this finding and update this post when/if I get an answer.

Hat tip to @leonardholmes for spotting this.

Postscript: An Ask.com spokesperson returned my request and told me the following:

For users who search for Jeeves, or type in the ‘askjeeves.com’ URL, we’re giving them an ‘easter egg’ that shows Jeeves on their homepage. The image disappears once the user exits their browser. It’s a nice surprise for those users who still look for him, and we’ve gotten positive feedback from our users who have experienced it.

Google recently came under fire for not providing a link to its privacy policy right from its home page, as Yahoo and Microsoft do. Ask.com, apparently hoping to ride the issue to some consumer gains, has emailed us that it now proudly sports a privacy link on its home page, along with some new privacy smart answers.

C’mon Google, just add the link — seven letters, PRIVACY, won’t take up much space. And it will at least stop others from riding you on the issue this way, even if practically no one will click on the link.

More from the Ask email, below:

An Open Letter to the Web Community and our Users:

Several weeks ago, a group of privacy advocates contacted a major company in the search marketplace, requesting some key changes to its website to make weblinks to its privacy policy more accessible and conspicuous. This included placing a “Privacy” link directly on the homepage that would, in one click, serve up the company’s privacy policy to the user.

In their June 3rd letter requesting the change, the privacy groups stated that such a move represents “…a commitment by a commercial website to inform users about the company’s privacy practices.”

Ask.com agrees.

At Ask, we take our commitment to user privacy and data protection very seriously. We’ve demonstrated this not just through words, but through deeds and actions. We were the first major search company to announce that we would be placing privacy tools directly in the hands of our users, as we said we would do in July 2007. Then, we did it: we launched AskEraser in December 2007. Ask remains the only major search company to develop and deploy a privacy protection tool that that empowers web users to make decisions as to data retention by Ask. The AskEraser tool is right there on our homepage, a one-step mechanism to deleting a users’ search data from Ask.com servers.

Now, we’re going several steps further.

As of today, Ask.com has added a direct link to our privacy policy via a “Privacy” link prominently placed right on our homepage. It is only one of four non-search related weblinks on our homepage. We’ve also made sure that the “Privacy” link appears on the landing pages across most of Ask’s verticals as well, which cover almost all of Ask’s search traffic.

In addition to this important and timely step, Ask has also added a conspicuous link to our privacy policy right on our Ask “About” page, which is one click off our homepage.

At the same time, we realized we can – and should – do more to inform our users about the importance of privacy on Ask, and in general on the web. And we have. We are developing and finalizing two separate Ask “Smart Answer” search results pages, so when a user goes to Ask.com and types in “Ask Privacy” or “Privacy” in the search box, they will get served up a specially designed, robust, and comprehensive results page that is a one-stop shop of answers on both Ask’s privacy policies and actions (including AskEraser), as well as on privacy in general.

No one required that we take any of these steps. We took a look at our webpages, and realized we could make some key improvements when it came to privacy links on our service. It’s simply the right thing to do for the information and awareness of our users.

We strongly encourage others in the search marketplace and online industry to do the same.

By the way, as a result of the change, Ask.com in the UK no longer sports the Ask.com US link necessary to get to its US site after it directs you to the UK one. Yes, being in the UK, I find that annoying.

Stake Is Bought in IAC/InterActiveCorp from the New York Times reports Liberty Media Corporation purchased an additional 14 million shares in IAC/Interactive Corp, the parent company of Ask.com. The 14 million shares came out to about $339.5 million, but have given Liberty Media Corporation about a 30 percent stake in IAC.

Liberty Media Corporation purchased the shares to take advantage of the “recent decline in the stock price of IAC,” said the New York Times.

In somewhat related news, What Advice Would Dr. Phil Have for Ask.Com? from the NY Times blog looks at recent management changes at Ask.com and whether we’ll see a new marketing push to build traffic to the site.

Ask has been trying a range of strategies to gain more consumer attention and usage: the bold Ask 3D redesign, the questionable “algorithm” campaign, and now more TV product placement. AdAdge writes about Ask’s recent TV show integrations, including a new one with Entertainment Tonight: Previous integrations with reality competition series such as NBC’s “Treasure Hunters” and MTV’s “Road Rules” both succeeded in driving traffic in real time as the show’s search-based plotlines unfolded. But recent months have brought a bigger push in fictional entertainment, with Ask.com buying integrations in everything from Showtime’s “Weeds” to MGM’s indie flick “Lars and the Real Girl,” which opens in theaters Oct. 12. And starting tonight, Ask will go after the celeb-savvy searches via a new segment on “Entertainment Tonight’s” “The Insider” that will highlight the top three celeb searches on Ask.com.