Struggling search engine ask.com may not be with us much longer as Barry Diller, the CEO of IAC the parent company of ask.com announced yesterday at the company’s third quarter conference call that he is open to selling the belabored search engine.
“We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes, And, it is unlikely that we would be the consolidator.” ” Diller said.
Diller also described the future of Ask,com as “speculative” because of “fierce competition in search”.
IAC’s advertising revenue (which includes ask.com) has dropped something like 11% in the third quarter alone.
When I heard Diller’s words about the possible sale of Ask.com one thought immediately raced through my head.
“Didn’t ask.com die a long time ago…no? You mean they’re still there?! Huh…”
Yeah…according to the September 2009 Comscore Search Engine Rankings ask.com is a distant, distant fourth place with about 4.9% of the search volume on the Internet. Compared to Google’s 65% and Bing/Yahoo’s 28% ask.com isn’t ever worth mentioning.
In fact, I’ve never even written an article on how to rank well at ask.com
So who in their right mind would WANT to buy ask.com? Well…I wouldn’t think Google would want them….but maybe Microsoft might like to pick up ask.com’s search volume. We’ll just have to *yawn* wait and see…
What do you think about ask.com? Do you ever take ask.com into consideration when doing SEO work? Comment below…
October 28, 2009
SEO News