Many search engine optimization professionals have long hoped that Ask.com, the scrappy search engine underdog, would give the big three (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft) a run for their money.
In July 2006, we saluted Ask.com by documenting their little known Ask.com API data interface. Unfortunately, Ask shut off external access to this interface in March 2007.
Ask’s future became doubtful earlier this year as key management and staff were fired. Danny Sullivan even wrote Ask.com’s obituary, a bit in jest – or maybe not.
While analyzing web analytics log files, I noticed that
the Ask.com bot, Ask Jeeves/Teoma, stopped crawling my Antezeta web sites on February 22/23, 2008. Yet I see a post from early May in the Ask.com search results.
Either Ask.com changed the name of their crawling bot, rather unlikely when you’re firing people, or they have outsourced their search results to Google. With a significant freshness delay.
And then there were three. Too bad. R.I.P. Ask.com.
Disclaimer: due to Ask’s low market penetration in Europe, I did not verify that Ask has stopped crawling other websites. I hope someone will prove me wrong, but I would be rather surprised, given the bigger picture.
Similar Posts:
- Search engine Teoma is back. But will anybody notice, much less care?
- Decrypting Ask’s Web Search API
- Yahoo Directories in Europe RIP. Did anybody notice?
- Web Text Search is Hard. Image indexing is even harder. Just ask Cuil.
- Google Crawling and Execution of JavaScript: where are we at today?
Registration is now open for the next SEO Course (May 14 and 15) and Google Analytics Course (May 9 and 10) in Milan. Don’t miss the opportunity!
Sean Carlos is a web marketing consultant & teacher, assisting companies with their Search (SEO + PPC = SEM), Social Media & Digital Media Measurement strategies. Sean first worked with text indexing in 1990 in a project for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since then he worked for Hewlett-Packard Consulting and later as IT Manager of a real estate website before founding Antezeta in 2006. Sean is an 
Googles grasp grows.
I used to like a service called http://clusty.com/ – which is still around. It’s not bad either.
Actually, I don’t think many people know what a ‘search engine’ is, but mention Google, and they know the name instantly – if they are web users.
It’s a bit like the ‘Highlander’ series of films – ‘in the end, there can be only one.’
All the best,
Alex