by Head of Search
Andrew Girdwood
With the Microsoft-Yahoo-Google tangle dominating search headlines for the last two months, it's been a quiet time for Ask. Andrew Girdwood
The exit of then CEO Jim Lanzone in January was followed by a change in direction from the search engine, which has aimed to concentrate on appealing to and retaining its most loyal followers.
However, recent research by comScore has revealed that Ask's new strategy might not be working as well as it hopes - at least in the UK. According to the figures, Google receives more traffic from users leaving Ask UK than eBay and Microsoft sites, its two closest rivals, combined. March's figures from comScore show that YouTube, Google Search, Blogger properties and Google Maps are highly ranked outgoing traffic sites.
ComScore's Media Metrix "outgoing traffic losses" report indicates the web properties that users browse after visiting Ask UK. The top outgoing traffic sites are dominated by search engines, social networks and portals.
- 1. Google Sites
- 2. eBay
- 3. Microsoft Sites
- 4. Ask Network
- 5. Yahoo! Sites
- 6. BBC Sites
- 7. Facebook
- 8. Bebo
- 9. Wikipedia Sites
- 10. Yellow Book Network
The combined top ten accounts for nearly 30% of Ask UK's outgoing traffic losses - and the outgoing top ten is a near mirror image of the incoming top ten.
- 1. Google Sites
- 2. Microsoft Sites
- 3. eBay
- 4. Ask Network
- 5. Yahoo! Sites
- 6. BBC Sites
- 7. AOL
- 8. Facebook
- 9. Virgin Media
- 10. Amazon Sites
ComScore's incoming and outgoing traffic rankings include traffic generated by click through activity, but also takes into account users entering new addresses in their browser bar or selecting bookmarks.
Ask's current CEO is Jim Safka, who also runs IAC's investment arm Primal Ventures. In March, bigmouthmedia reported on Ask's change of direction, through which it hopes to gain the patronage of women searching for information on entertainment and health.
At the time, Charlene Li - an analyst for Forrester Research - (perhaps prophetically) claimed: "It's a smart move. I still think Ask has great technology but it's just really hard to fight against Google."
