by Search Copywriter
D. Warburton
D. Warburton
Determined to retain its modest share of the search engine market, Ask.com has introduced a new service aimed at guiding users to the best discounts online.Ask Deals browses online stores to find sites offering coupons and other discounts, compiling a database of more than 1 million offers which is then manually edited and organised. The New York Times reports that the Ask Deals service will be automatically activated when a user enters a query into the Ask search engine containing relevant terms such as 'bargain,' 'cheap,' 'coupon,' 'discount' or 'sale.'
President of Ask Networks, Scott Garell stated: "I think this is something that is going to resonate with Americans given where the economy is at this point in time." Mr Garell explained that the service aims to provide users with a central hub for finding the best deals online without having to scour sites manually.
Ask.com has been struggling to stay relevant in the search engine market by responding to consumer interests, a turbulent journey that saw them drop their iconic butler mascot in 2008 only to revive the Ask Jeeves moniker earlier this year. But this latest foray into online discounts may prove a hit, particularly as the use of coupons has flourished in the recession.
Ask Deals will face tough competition from dedicated coupon and price comparison websites however, as well as their major search engine competitors who already earn a substantial part of their advertising revenue from product searches, with services such as Bing's Visual Search being directly geared towards online shopping.
It remains to be seen whether Ask Deals can improve the company's stake in the search engine market, which has remained relatively static in recent years. comScore figures of the US search engine market for August 2008 found that Ask.com held a modest 3.9 per cent market share, compared to 64.6 per cent for Google, 19.3 per cent for Yahoo! and 9.3 per cent for Bing.
