Comments on: How SEOs Really Evaluate a Search Engine

By: earlpearl

earlpearl — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 23:50:58 +0000

Nice essay, Donna. I’d look at it in the same you did. I get diddly squat traffic. Once in a blue moon I look at my rankings.

If I was in charge of an SE I’d conduct independant research from the general public to see how the great mass of people view SE’s.

I just read some information on growth in the market from SES NYC. I think I read that G is gaining more market share than MSN and Y, but Y and MSN and other portals do better than G.

All of them are competing for market share. Its a long haul for Ask.

By: rmccarley

rmccarley — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:53:23 +0000

Donna, according to Nielsen Ask has the most significant growth of all the SEs but only holds 2.6% of the total market. I think part of why we don’t see much traffic for them is their “annoying” tendancy to answer the users question right in the SERPs as Rand commented on here: http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=503

Honestly, I seem to rank well with Ask, but get more traffic from Dogpile, AOL and even Clutsy.

By: rmccarley

rmccarley — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:50:18 +0000

Donna, Ask has 2.6% of the total SE marketshare according to Nielsen at http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3570686. They have had the most significant growth of all the SEs.

They are the most visible of all the “minor” SEs but they do things so differently! It isn’t what people expect of an SE and I think that while that sets them apart, it also hurts them.

Idealy people shouldn’t even notice the process, just the results and with Ask’s features in their SERPs they should be way ahead of where they are IMO.

In the last couple months they have expanded to the German and Spanish markets so we’ll see what happens.

Also, I think Ask is it’s own worst enemy for SEOs. Because Ask displays so much information in their SERPs I bet they often answer the question the viewer had so the viewer no longer clicks through.

Rand posted about that here: http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=503

But I’d watch out for Cutts making a move over there. He almost gushes about them in his blog. 😉

By: DazzlinDonna

DazzlinDonna — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:57:35 +0000

See, I knew there were some out there who actually use real stats, rather than gut feelings. LOL. No doubt you’re right though, JD.

By: ILoveJackDaniels

ILoveJackDaniels — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:12:36 +0000

> How much market share does Ask.com have? Well, I frankly didn’t bother to find out the actual percentage, because I already know that none of my sites get diddly squat traffic from Ask

I’ve heard similar from so many people it’s terrifying. Just because a site gets no traffic from an engine does not mean that nobody uses it. It just means that that site is getting no traffic from that engine.

Ask actually does get some significant traffic, at least in the UK. At the end of 2005, a little over 5% of UK searches were through Ask, according to Hitwise. That’s a lot of people using an engine that most SEOs are ignoring …

By: Nirav

Nirav — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:10:08 +0000

Yes Ask.com do have potentional to establish them as one of major search engines, but I have noticed that their crawlers are not as actives as G, Y and M, so initially they have increase their index size.

Ask.com looks promosing to me