Ask.com Missed the Point
filed in Blogging/Web, Design: Marketing on Aug.30, 2007
While watching Top Chef last night with my wife, I saw an ad for ask.com that stuck with me… Even as I woke up this morning, I was thinking about the ad.
The ad was very aggressive and went after the big dog on the block: Google – not specifically by name, of course.
The ad’s only message was to say that your search shouldn’t be boring, ala white background, sparse graphics, etc… like Google. Instead, check out all the cook “skins” (background photos) that you can apply to our search page to make searching… fun?
Ask.com has totally misjudged their audience. Their audience consists of people searching for information, and they’re going to go to who – in their mind – can deliver the most accurate results. That is the position ask.com should have taken, not the frilly stuff that has no real bearing on the user’s visit.
Am I being too harsh?
I looked briefly on youtube and ask.com’s website for a clip of the commercial and came up empty.
August 30th, 2007 on 3:52 pm
Boy, you hit it right on the head! People go to a search engine to find information. Which search engine is best depends on what type of information you want. Some are crawler or spider based and some are human built-directories. Many are a hybrid of both techniques.
Google and Ask are both crawler based. Which is better? It’s a matter of opinion and experience. If someone concludes that the results are the same, then maybe there is a case to be made for background pictures. For me, I’ll stick with Google.
August 31st, 2007 on 1:55 pm
i think you are not being complitely fair. google has done a great job, but We (the consumers) need to have choice and we should encourage the other contenders in this market.
ask.com is a great site,its search results are sometimes less pollutted from ads and spam than google’s are. the new funcionalities and the video search that they developed is very cool and definitly broader than google’s or yahoo’s.
in a world were google can do no wrong (nor evil for that matter) i applaude the other contenders.market competition can only benefit the users.
regards
john
August 31st, 2007 on 10:08 pm
John, I agree completely that Google needs competition (as does Microsoft) and we consumers need to have a choice. My gripe isn’t that Ask.com claims to be a better search engine than Google – for all I know it very well may be. My gripe is that they spent good money from their advertising budget on a :30 second TV spot that didn’t talk to the user about anything of substance, like search capabilities or features. Instead they attack their competitor for having too boring of a design and said, “Hey look at us, we can change our background and they can’t.” Big friggin deal.
September 5th, 2007 on 10:30 am
No you are not being to harsh. I agree that Google needs competition, but as far as I am concerned they don’t have any yet. I use Google because of there spell check system, only twice(ever) has it not gotten me where I wanted, any other search engine I am lucky if I get where I want half of the time on the first search. (yes my spelling is that bad)