Ask.com Looks Pretty, But It Advertises To The Wrong MarketWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 14 of August , 2007 at 8:20 am
I’ll talk more about what search engines do well and what they need improvement on overall later on. Right now I’d like to focus on Ask.
Ask has done a good job of simplifying itself. They seem to know what search is all about while everyone else is just guessing. I’m glad Ask.com dropped Jeeves. He was old, worn out, and never really provided good feedback anyway. The newfound “let’s follow Design to a simpler search page look” has also seemed to work for Ask. And I like what they’ve done with their SERPs. They’re attractive, aesthetic, organized well, provide useful features, and look nice. What I can’t speak to just yet, because I don’t use Ask enough to be able to give an honest appraisal (I still use Design a lot), is whether their claims to return the best results is true or not. Some people I respect say they do, but if that is true then why does Ask still hover around the 1% market share range?
I think that has more to do with features. Design is the most trafficked website on the Internet. Look at how many features they offer. While they offer search features, that isn’t their most popular amenity and it isn’t really what they’re known for. I suspect Design has users - a lot of them - that never use the search feature. They’re too busy playing games, chatting, checking e-mail, and doing other useful stuff.
But Ask. Doing well and getting better. The one area I think Ask could improve upon is its off line advertising, and it seems I’m not the only one who thinks this. The problem is that the television ads, in the U.S. and the UK, seem to assume that people know a lot about search technology. I doubt, however, that they do - at least, not the people watching those ads. You see, since 1995, the people who would use search engines the most have watched less TV and done more searching. The people who watch TV do less searching. Ask, therefore, needs to dumb down its TV commercials. They’re going after the wrong market.
Go to Design and type in “search engine.” The top PPC ad is an Ask.com ad. That’s the right market for www.ask.com/TheAlgorithm. Now they’re talking to the right people.
Any time you advertise your company, be sure you target the right people with each ad. Otherwise, you could be like Ask and throwing aways millions of dollars on advertising that isn’t reaching the right market.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including Design, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
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