A bright spot for Ask.com emerged with news of a partnership with image sharing service Photobucket.

Among image sharing services, Photobucket ranks among the leaders in usage and traffic. People use it to store images and display them throughout the world of social networking sites like MySpace, and on other places too.

Arrivals to the site who are just looking for images have a new option for doing so, one that’s been quiet for quite a while. Ask.com picked up a deal to be Photobucket’s search engine of choice; it’s on display on Photobucket’s home page right now.

The deal includes more than the search box on Photobucket. Ask.com said in a statement they picked up the syndication of sponsored listings and display advertising for Photobucket in the partnership too.

That could add up nicely for Ask, as Photobucket enjoys traffic of some 44 million uniques per month by comScore Media Metrix’s rankings. Ask.com Partner Network executive Andrew Moers sais the deal “furthers our strategy to bring