Gasta Search News: Ask Latest reinvigouration

Ask.com Aims For More Relevance, More Engagement With Latest Revamp; More Users Wouldn’t Hurt
Yet another update from search engine Ask.com just a year and a half after its last overhaul. It’s going live today in the US with its “next generation,” while the UK launch is slated for October 20. Goals include reducing searches to one click and providing direct answers on the results page in high-volume categories. The changes follow a shift in strategy announced last spring to focus less on the whiz-bang kind of services that might impress “the digerati” and more on practical results.
Ask says it has improved site download speeds by 30 percent compared to the same time last year. The search engine says it remains the thirteenth largest Internet brand in the UK and cites Hitwise, who says Ask.com’s unique users in the UK has grown 38.6 percent, faster than any of the other major search engines. From July to August, Ask.com’s unique UK users grew from 6.5 million to 6.9 million. In terms of market share, however, this is still a miniscule slice of the market. In August, Ask.com share was 2.69 percent, compared to Google.co.uk’s 73.13 percent, and Google.com’s 14.20 percent.
—Ask “now ranks and integrates content from a broader and more comprehensive set of content types – such as breaking news, blogs, images, videos, and music – right into the center panel.”
—Ask goes deeper into its highest-volume categories—Entertainment, Health & Nutrition, Jobs, and Reference—for direct responses.
—A new Q&A channel with direct answers to “everyday” questions. It draws on q&a content from across the web. There’s also a new direct answers channel—http://www.answers.ask.com/
—Dropping nav icons for text to make loading the homepage faster.