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Ask.com Search Is Effectively Nothing More Than An Ad Engine

techcrunch.com — Search for Stocks on Ask and you'll get 13 advertisements and just 9 actual search results on the first page. Same for Mortgages, Cars, and thousands of other terms. For these searches, the first actual search result is 100 pixels down the page. Some queries, like Dogs, are a little more reasonable, with just four advertisements on the first page.

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 10, 2008

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  • xbanned, on 12/09/2008, -2/+56Perhaps that explains their market share.
  • gsgdiggs, on 12/09/2008, -0/+41Yeah I am not a big Ask fan, I have never found it as useful as Google.
  • CaptainShaun, on 12/10/2008, -1/+38Oh Jeeves, you sell-out.
  • dannymb877, on 12/10/2008, -0/+31And get a load of this. When you search "Show me a ***** of ads" it only shows you three.

    PROOF: http://www.ask.com/web?qsrc=2417&o=0&l=dir ...

    This is an outrage!
  • pitchblack16, on 12/09/2008, -2/+31I wonder what kind of a website Ass.com is??
  • gberkshire, on 12/09/2008, -3/+31More like ass.com.

    (It's obvious, but someone had to say it.)
  • awolfe91, on 12/10/2008, -0/+16Who knew you had to google a direct url
  • exec0extreme, on 12/10/2008, -1/+10It's the algorithm
  • ExRe, on 12/10/2008, -0/+8ask.com is still around?
  • Rfriaz, on 12/10/2008, -0/+7It contains exactly what you'd think it contains (I have verified this).
  • kleash, on 12/10/2008, -0/+7Why don't you go and find out and then tell us the results.
  • Pinkertinkle, on 12/10/2008, -0/+6Ask.com is but months from bankruptcy,
  • AyaJulia, on 12/10/2008, -0/+6"100 pixels down the page" is a typo, and it's the submitter's error. Did you, like, I don't know... click the link? Look at the screencap, which couldn't possibly make it clearer?

    FTA: "For these searches, the first actual search result is 1,000 pixels down the page."
  • DeFex, on 12/10/2008, -1/+6i wish it would "ask" to be installed.
  • SDL486, on 12/10/2008, -0/+5Google, FTW!
  • awolfe91, on 12/10/2008, -1/+6They must be stopped! Let all the Ask.com users strike against them...

    http://instantcrickets.com/
  • sexybobo, on 12/10/2008, -0/+5I usually do in case i misspell something.
  • thetechgeek, on 12/10/2008, -1/+6Who the hell uses ask.com
  • SanAhn, on 12/10/2008, -0/+51000 pixels*
  • LilRabbitFooFoo, on 12/10/2008, -0/+5Somewhere at Ask.com, they are asking themselves why traffic has spiked today. 8)
  • hollywoodphony, on 12/10/2008, -1/+5This isn't the actual ask.com page. A quick look on the real page will show you completely different results. They bury this at the bottom of this story:

    Update: Note from Ask.com: “This is not a search experience you’d ever find by going directly to Ask.com. As you may know, we’ve actually recently decreased the number of ads on Ask.com and have fewer ads than even Google. It seems that you’ve found an edge case, where a syndication partner may have asked us to increase the number of ads for their traffic to meet their business needs – something other search engines do, as well.”
  • sparkplug890, on 12/10/2008, -0/+4No, man, please don't usinging Ask. It's just not worth it.
  • MountainGoatMan, on 12/10/2008, -0/+4Instead of Jeeves being your bitch, it's now the other way around.
  • falstaff, on 12/10/2008, -1/+5Ads? Somebody doesn't have the right extensions installed....
  • roxgod666, on 12/10/2008, -0/+4letmeaskthatforyou.com?

    Nah it's not worthy
  • inactive, on 12/10/2008, -0/+3I think the bigger issue here is - why are you using ask as your search engine?
  • Sylphid15, on 12/10/2008, -2/+5100 pixels down the page is pretty deep
  • Akyu, on 12/10/2008, -1/+4Google does this exact same thing, just not quite as often. And if you count the ads on the side, google searches have even more ads. find something else to whine about, cause this is digging real deep.
  • podforpeace, on 12/10/2008, -1/+4I don't ask, I google.
  • TheChunt, on 12/10/2008, -1/+4Its actually quite tasteful for a porn site. With the exception of the 4 anal ads I found on the home page.
  • Khast, on 12/10/2008, -1/+4People actually use ask.com? I mean heck, Google is so far the best (And so versatile), Yahoo is pretty good, MSN is okay.

    There's other search engines out there, but these are the "Big 3" search engines.
  • fortune500b, on 12/10/2008, -1/+4What I hate about Ask is its firm belief that using it is some sort of mind altering "experience" that leads to the ultimate satisfaction and eternal purity
  • Johaen, on 12/10/2008, -1/+4Why would you use anything other than google?
  • dawna67, on 12/10/2008, -1/+4not for me, I search for info, not for product info
  • philodygmn, on 12/10/2008, -0/+3They should, like, be sued for false advertising of themselves as a search engine ;-P
  • diggdatt, on 12/10/2008, -0/+2Dugg. Thanks for pointing out ad insanity.
  • LeggoMyEgo, on 12/10/2008, -1/+3What‽

    Interrobang, use it.
  • benman587, on 12/10/2008, -0/+2I typed in http://www.ask.com and searched for "Obama", "Pokemon", and "Wisconsin" and got lots of ads on all 3 searches.
  • benmiller313, on 12/10/2008, -1/+3huh. no matter what i search on ask.com, i cant get any more than two or three ads before the real results. not 9 or 10.
  • houndeyex, on 12/10/2008, -0/+2Hell, I looked for "pr0n" and only got like 1 ad.
  • Sylphid15, on 12/10/2008, -0/+2Of course I did. Pointing out obvious mistakes is fun.
  • Dawson1066, on 12/10/2008, -0/+2The quality of dictionary.com has plummeted since they took it over too. It has been astonishing.
  • inactive, on 12/10/2008, -0/+2But guys don't you remember their recent advertising scheme? It's the best algorithm!
  • cankillar, on 12/10/2008, -2/+4That's odd, because when I go to http://www.ask.com and actually search "stocks", I get the exact same thing.
  • darkmuck, on 12/10/2008, -0/+1adblock?
  • BTime, on 12/10/2008, -0/+1I used to use Dictionary.Com but now they're tied in with Ask.com and has turned into complete garbage =(
  • VivaNiagara, on 02/06/2009, -0/+1http://www.spyshakers.com/espionage/
  • zbeast, on 12/10/2008, -0/+1The thing is the quality of the search results from ask suck. That goes beyond receiving ad's as part of your search results.
    My person order of preference for search sites. Google for just about everything, yahoo if I think I didn't find what I want, then
    msn, for images. There image search is better than google. I'll use dogpile.com long before I'll use ask.

  • Avaya, on 12/10/2008, -0/+1That would explan a few thing...!
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