Ask.com shuts down after over 25 years
The turn down web page says, "Jeeves’ spirit endures."
Topic: Jeeves
This day in search marketing history: March 16
Google to sunset Universal Analytics, plus: Google's doorway page penalty, over-optimization, Chrome’s paid link penalty ends and more.
Ask.com Celebrates 15th Birthday
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 […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 25, 2010
From Search Engine Land: Playing Games With Customers: Is Foursquare The Future Of Local Search? Congratulations! You are now the Mayor of Search Engine Land! If that sounds familiar you are one of the growing number of people using/playing Foursquare, a mobile app that uses the location of your mobile device to encourage users to […]
Dress Up Ask Jeeves In The UK
Ask UK (uk.ask.com) has a new game where you can dress up the lovable Jeeves character. Just search for [want to dress up jeeves] at Ask UK and you will be presented the opportunity to place khakis on the famous butler. You can dress up Jeeves at uk.ask.com/dressupjeeves. UTalkMarketing.com reported “Gieves and Hawkes together with […]
Ask CEO Safka to Depart
According to the Wall Street Journal, Ask.com CEO Jim Safka is leaving the company. He will become the head of Chegg, Inc., which rents textbooks to students online. The decision to leave is apparently Safka’s, for personal reasons. Longtime IAC executive Scott Garell will take over as “President of Ask Networks.” In its most recent […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 20, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Ask Welcomes Back Jeeves, At Least In The UK, That Is
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 […]
December 2008: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories
Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from December 2008: Top 10 Most Popular Stories: December 2008 1) Santa Tracker 2008: Google & NORAD Team Up Again – My favorite Christmas activity is tracking Santa’s route around the world. Once again, NORAD and Google are making it easy. The NORAD Tracks Santa 2008 site […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 18, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Ask.com Plays The Google AdWords Arbitrage Game
Ah, Ask.com. Since I wrote their obituary in March, not much has got me thinking they’ll make a comeback. Sure, there was the gimmick of kind of bringing back Jeeves himself. But the spate of “hotels.ask.com” ads I see them running on Google makes me think they’re dropping further from being a search engine and […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 4, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Jeeves Returns To Ask Jeeves; Ask.com Still Shuns Him
Try it, go to askjeeves.com, notice how it redirects you to ask.com and then shows you the old Jeeves character.
Ask.com Goes Back To 1996 With New Release
Ask.com has released version 11 of their new search engine today. The new version somewhat goes back to the Ask Jeeves approach, focusing on providing structured search results, mostly in the form of answers. Techmeme has coverage of the news item, with the main articles currently from the NY Times and News.com.
Obit: A West Coast Digerati Deadpools Ask.com
Goodbye, Ask.com. You caught my eye back in 1997 as an unusual meta search engine that asked questions to get answers. By 1998, I counted you alongside Google and Direct Hit as shining examples of what to watch in search. You’d dumped depending on others for search results and started providing answers using your own […]
IAC Cuts 8% Of Ask.com & Kills Search Engine
IAC’s Ask.com to Cut Staff, Outlines New Search Strategy from the Wall Street Journal reports IAC has cut 8% of Ask.com’s workforce, by letting go 40 people. Not only that, the Wall Street Journal says IAC is changing the strategy of the search engine to “focus to better answering search queries posed as questions.” Ask’s […]
Google Takes Top Prize At SMX Search Bowl
Last night was the first ever SMX Search Bowl. Basically, the Search Engine Land team created fifty questions that were asked to the various teams. The teams consisted of two players from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, Live Search, and the SEM All Star team. Danny displayed the questions on the screen and the first team to […]
Ask.com Adds More Sponsored Ads, Pushing Organic Results Below Fold
I was messing around with the Ask.com interface on my Mac and decided to compare some results between my Mac browser and Internet Explorer for PC. I noticed that Ask.com is now displaying five sponsored results for many keyword searches. The organic results are now below the fold, like they once were before dropping Jeeves.
Jim Safka To Replace Jim Lanzone As CEO Of Ask.com
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 […]
Ask.com: Today’s Google Free Alternative
Today’s the day we’re encouraging people to try Ask.com as part of our Google Free Fridays in July. But why is it happening on a Monday? Because I’m a day behind, as I explained last Friday. Shush, you! What’s that? Why do we hate Google so much to be promoting Google Free Fridays? We don’t, […]
Ask Ramps Up The Mystery Ads
First in the UK, Ask rolled out a guerilla marketing campaign aimed at sparking an "information revolution" to choose Ask over Google. Now a different yet still mysterious campaign is underway in the US by Ask. Valleywag reports about billboards on Highway 101 between San Francisco and San Jose saying "The Algorithm Killed Jeeves" [Ask’s […]
Gary Price of Ask.com & ResourceShelf Interviewed
Q&A With Ask.com’s Gary Price from Search Engine Watch has an interview with one of the people I look up to most in this industry. As you may remember I came in to help fill a void at Search Engine Watch after Gary left to join Ask.com. Gary is now the director of online information […]