Search Marketing Blog
Ask-ing for New Direction
Today, DMNews reported that the current CEO at Ask.com, Jim Lanzone, will be stepping down, and be replaced immediately by Jim Safka, the current CEO of Primal Ventures, a new venture firm that identifies business opportunities for Ask.com’s parent company IAC Search and Media.
This announcement comes at the same that IAC is preparing to separate into five publicly traded companies. As you may be aware, IAC plans to spin-off Ask.com., Ticketmanster, LendingTree, HSN, and Interval International into stand-alone public entities.
I can see the value of several of these entities operating as independent publicly-traded companies, however, I perceive that Ask.com will have a difficult time on its own, given that the search company is current bringing-up the rear in the race of the top-5 search engines.
As shown below, Ask.com had only 2.7 percent of the United States search market in November 2007, according to the December 2007 Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search report.
Search Provider Percent of Searches Y-O-Y Growth Rate
Google 57.7% 40.8%
Yahoo! 17.9% 26.7%
MSN/Windows Live 1 2.0% 27.8%
AOL 4.5% 14.7%
Ask.com 2.7% 10.5%
The daunting challenge that Ask.com faces is the fact that, unlike its top rival Google, the company needs to spend significant advertising dollars on traditional media, such as television commercials, to attract new users. It’s always an up-hill climb when your top competitor is perceived as the ‘default’ provider. But, that may be why they are going after “The Street” money.
Let me know if you think Ask.com will be a relevant player in the next few years.
Website Optimization - Terry Reeves 01.11.2008 at 12:56 pm
If Ask can’t carve out a bigger piece of the pie for themselves, obviously, it will be their own fault. I personally am a big fan of Ask but my work requires that I spend my time searching in Google. No one really wants to rank in Ask. I would love to see that change and it can in time if they convince people to give them a real try.
seth 01.12.2008 at 5:49 am
Lanzone is not stepping down, was fired by Diller for not delivering business results and mismanagement. With Safka, ask.com will hopefully focus on core business not just on image and funny ads.
re-route.co.uk 01.15.2008 at 3:52 am
To be honest my first port of call is always google, if Ask had something similar and i supposed was more recognised in the market place then i probably would consider using it. i think they seriously need to consider how they go about recruiting new users and offering something different if they want to play big with the likes of google.
Suzanne
www.aristacomputers.com 02.21.2008 at 4:07 pm
I agree about the ASK comment, google is too big