“nRelate’s platform helps over 30k publishers (bloggers and other media) increase traffic through targeted article recommendations within content,” a representative for Ask tells WebProNews. “Ask will apply its technology and expertise in search-based content discovery to create new products and marketing opportunities for content owners.”

According to Ask, nRelate’s platform has spurred 15% growth in impressions each month during the past year. With nRelate as part of Ask, the product will get answers from Ask’s Q&A platform integrated into the mix.

“Ask.com has been successfully building its Q&A business, yielding record growth and profits, allowing us to witness, firsthand, how users’ appetites for browsing and discovering content is only growing,” said Ask CEO Doug Leeds. “In addition to enhancing reader engagement, nRelate represents a promising native monetization model for publishers. We’re also excited to provide a platform that enables content creators to expose top-notch content to new audiences.”

“When it comes to content discovery products, publishers often get the short end of the stick with little control or customization,” said nRelate CEO Neil Mody, who will continue to run the product under Ask. “nRelate has been successful in part due to the flexibility of our products that allow publishers to design the product exactly how they want. The combination with Ask gives us access to new technologies and resources to fuel a wider range of products that both move the needle for publishers and improve the reader experience.”

Ask’s Q&A platform attracts 65 million unique U.S. visitors per month, according to the company. This acquisition should give Ask a nice shot at increasing those numbers.

I’m not sure that there was much doubt it was Google anyway, but after looking at Google’s results for “viagra” in light of its Penguin update, and comparing them to the results on other search engines, Ask’s SERP for the query was nearly identical, down to the specific flaws we pointed out about Google’s version. Google has corrected some of these flaws, and those same ones appear to have been corrected on Ask’s version as well.

A spokesperson for Ask told us, “A third-party partner powers core web search on Ask.com, but that information is not public for contractual reasons.”

“Ask’s search technology is focused on surfacing answers to questions rather than links, and it’s powered by a combination of technologies,” she said. “A third party search engine supplies the raw search feeds and we build our own algorithms on top of that, designed specifically to locate and extract answers to questions.”

Here’s what Ask says on its Editorial Guidelines page about its automated search results:

Ask.com delivers its primary search results using it’s proprietary search technology. These search results appear under the heading “Web Results”. Ask.com search technology uses sophisticated algorithms and Subject-Specific PopularitySM data to generate the most relevant and authoritative results on the Web.

Here’s what it says about its sponsored links:

Results appearing under the heading “Sponsored Web Results” or “Sponsored Web Result” are provided by Google, a third party provider of pay for performance search listings. Google generates highly relevant sponsored results by allowing advertisers to bid for placement in this area based on relevant keywords. These results, which are powered by Google’s advanced algorithms, are then distributed across the Internet to some of the world’s most popular and well-known Web sites, including Ask.

Here’s a screen cap of the “viagra” results before they were fixed:

You can just compare the results to the ones I talked about in this article and see the obvious similarities (which were not all duplicated on the other search engines).

By the way, if you ask Ask.com, “Does Google power Ask.com’s search results?” the top two results are articles that suggest that Google may power Ask.com’s search results. Of course, they also happen to be the same results Google gives you when you ask the same question in a Google query.

If you’re counting Bing and Yahoo together in those search market reports, you might as well be counting Google and Ask together as well. And AOL, of course.

When speaking to Ask’s Lisa Kavanaugh, Ask’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, Abby Johnson and the rest of the WebProNews video team found out the details of Ask’s new strategy when it comes to creating new ideas and innovation in general. The idea for this new method of inspiring creativity, at least in the world of Internet technology, came when Ask CEO Doug Leeds read Fey’s book. As you might expect, the part that stood out to him was using improv as a way to get the creative juices following. Because of that, Ask has now incorporated improv as part of the innovation process, and while the idea may seem silly, according to Kavanaugh, the results have been quite positive.

The idea was initially greeted with some skepticism, but now, it’s apart of the Ask strategy. According to Kavanaugh, the idea is “borrowing from the tenants of improv and applying that to a business setting in order to stimulate innovation from a new way of thinking.” She goes on to say that improv allows co-workers to share and build upon ideas in a collaborative manner in an atmosphere where no idea or suggestion is a bad one. Essentially, the improvisational approach allows the Ask team to work together with others in order to build something bigger and better.

While the team was a little apprehensive to idea at first, according to Kavanaugh, the new strategy has been embraced by the Ask team. It should be noted that Ask’s developers are not the only ones part of this new approach. Improv training has been passed down to the entire company, including receptionists and mailroom employees.

In fact, to facilitate this process, every Friday, Ask’s team goes through their “funivation” warm ups, which allows them to break out of the standard way of thinking in such business surroundings. Based on the feedback from Kavanaugh, the idea has been embraced by the entire company, and it seems to have rejuvenated the innovation process.

The question is, if it works for Ask, will it work for your company? What do you think? Is it time to break out of those dull strategy meetings and engage employees on a different level, especially if you see it working in other environments?

“Polling is one of the most engaging and straightforward Q&A formats on the Web – in fact, users in the Ask.com Q&A community continue to leverage the service as a polling mechanism,” said Doug Leeds, CEO, Ask.com. “SXSW is the perfect testing ground for us to play with mobile polling functionality, including filters like social connections and location, ultimately shaping how these features are integrated across both our flagship mobile app and site.”

Pollroll is a lightweight app designed to facilitate the creation, distribution and sharing of poll questions and results. For example, SXSW attendees can use Pollroll to discover the best BBQ, the hottest party or the most engaging panel to attend while at the event.

Pollroll features include:

Visual polling: Snap a picture and create a poll, or use the in-app image search to make a poll come alive.

Response filters: View responses from anyone, just your friends or those in a specific location.

Get context: Access comments to understand why respondents voted the way they did.

Discover and share: Browse, engage with and share more than 1,000 high quality, editorially curated polls. You can also browse user polls based on recency, popularity, location or social connections.

Previously only limited to a subset of Ask.com website users, the full Ask.com Q&A experience is now available to anyone who downloads the app.

“Millions of people come to Ask.com with their questions everyday – now they don’t have to wait until they get back to their computers to get the answers they need," said Doug Leeds, President, Ask.com US.

"The number of questions posed on Ask.com has steadily increased since our Q&A beta launch and the addition of our mobile app helps us do a better job of getting those answers, either from the web or from people nearby."

Features of Ask for iPhone include:

*Combination of search and real people. Ask for iPhone answers questions using either search technology or information from people.

*Say your question. Voice to text functionality allows users to ask questions without typing.

*Intelligent question routing. Mobile users’ questions don’t just get routed to other devices, they get delivered to any Ask.com user who is qualified to answer.

*Answers find you. Push notifications include the entire answer, no clicking through to the Ask.com site

By the end of the year, Ask for iPhone will also allow users to browse questions within their immediate surroundings, route location-specific questions to nearby Ask.com members and review recent questions asked about nearby points of interest.

Dictionary.com’s purpose is to provide users with definitions (as well as spelling and context). So a look at the top searches there reflect less what people are interested in learning more information about, and more what they are trying to understand the meaning of on a word-by-word basis.

The top words searched for on Dictionary.com in 2009 have been:

1. Affect
2. Ubiquitous
3. Irony
4. Socialism
5. Effect
6. Melancholy
7. Love
8. Integrity
9. Nostalgic
10. Pedantic

Affect and effect are obviously searched for more because they are commonly misspelled in place of one another. Socialism’s position is likely a product of much political dialogue over the past year in this country. "Ubiquitous" is a word that has seemingly become kind of trendy to say. I have heard it used much more this year than any other year I can remember. Perhaps the most interesting entry is "love." That, I don’t have an explanation for.

The top gainers of 2009 on Dictionary.com were:

1. Esurient
2. Impeded
3. Shuddering
4. Fugacious
5. Suffering
6. Negative
7. Namaste
8. Adjuvant
9. Callipygian
10. Twitter

The top decliners were:

1. Bush
2.  Maverick
3.  Solace
4.  Liberal
5.  Obsequious
6.  Rhetoric
7.  Superfluous
8. Condescending
9.  Cynical
10. Ostentatious

Finally, the most commonly misspelled words in dictionary.com queries were:

1. Perseverance
2. Convenient
3. Embarrassed
4. Prerogative
5. Pretentious
6. Appalled
7. Genius
8. Definitely
9. Inadvertently
10. Separate

"Dictionary.com’s top searched words of the year clearly illustrate the everyday value of our service in helping people communicate smarter and more effectively," said David Wygant, Senior Director of Products and Programming. "With more than 43 million users relying on Dictionary.com per month, our end-of-year lists serve as a barometer of the prevailing attitudes and sentiments of people throughout 2009."

I think it would be interesting to see a list from Google on the use of it’s "define:" feature, which is a search operator that retrieves word definitions. I wonder if there would be many parallels. 
 

Related Articles:

> Google Year-End Zeitgeist Published

> Yahoo Releases Top Searches Of 2009

> Top Trending Topics on Bing

It’s natural language search, and it’s not exactly a new concept. However, Ask says it is dedicated to improving how well this works. It makes sense, since the Q&A niche has been the area of search, which Ask has carved out for itself. Rather than trying to compete directly with Google as Bing does, Ask appears to be more interested in setting itself apart as a place to go simply to find answers. "Asking a question isn’t the same as searching," says Ask.

How imporant will natural language search be in the future? Share your thoughts.

Ask illustrates the difference with a couple sample queries, saying that the most successful answers won’t get clicked:

The company says it is seeing increased loyalty from users who conduct question searches, and has seen "a pronounced increase" in the percentage of users who conduct queries in the form of a question. In fact, they claim to see three times more questions as a share of total queries than their competitors.

"Indeed, the information that is directly relevant to many questions most certainly exists; it’s just that it’s locked in people’s heads or captured in unpublished conversations, and therefore inaccessible by traditional search," says Ask President Doug Leeds. "Obviously, this is not a trivial deficiency in a world that is increasingly interconnected and clamoring for perspective, guidance, and shared knowledge at an interpersonal level online."

Ask is setting out to extract and rank existing answers, and index sources of answers that have not yet been published. "To extract and rank existing answers, as opposed to merely ranking web pages that contain information, we have and are continuing to develop a unique set of algorithms and technologies that are based on new signals for relevance specifically tuned to questions and answers," says Leeds, outlining these signals with the following images.

Right now, Ask is focused on developing a new algorithm that utilizes the signals highlighted above. "But our work doesn’t end with extraction and ranking of existing, published answers," says Leeds. "Where our vision really comes to life is in our efforts to index the sources of unpublished knowledge that can generate answers specifically in response to a question, in the moment it’s asked. This is the long tail of questions that are nearly impossible for search engines to answer, but which create incredible value for users when they are."

These include complex questions (like "What is the cheapest way to get to the Austin airport from downtown Austin?"), temporally dependant questions (like "When will the Oakland Bay Bridge re-open?"), and subjective questions (like "What should you do to save a withering tomato plant?").

Ask has reached a milestone of 400 million Q&A pairs in its database, so the engine is already capable of answering a significant amount of questions you might have, but there’s a lot of work to be done in order to give users the "best answers on the planet" in real time, as the company intends to do. It will be interesting to see how Ask’s progress comes along. Leeds promises updates on the company blog as they work their way along.

Do you think Q&A search is an important part of search’s future? Do you think Ask will play a key role in it? Do you ever use Ask to find answers? Tell us what you think in the comments.

Related Articles:

> Ask Gets More Serious About Answers

> Ask.com Gets New U.S. Leadership

> Microsoft Tipped As Most Likely Ask.com Buyer

> Searching for Answers Google Doesn’t Have

Leeds has been with Ask Networks since early 2006, where he has held several different positions. Most recently, he has been President of the company’s Dictionary.com and Chief Operating officer of Ask Networks. Now as President, he will oversee the US business for Ask.com and lead the development, launch, and execution of Ask’s strategy in the U.S.

"Doug’s elevation to President of the Ask.com U.S. business is very timely and important to our future, and his ongoing leadership has led to a broad array of successes across our businesses – driving Ask Networks to become the 6th largest internet property in the U.S.," said Scott Garell, President, Ask Networks.

Leeds has also held executive roles at Yahoo and Vodafone in the past.

"We are also delighted and fortunate to have Tony join us to lead our product management efforts as we continue to innovate for 2010 and beyond," adds Garell.  "I look forward to working closely with Doug and Tony to make Ask the most trusted place for answers on the web."

Gentile will report to Leeds. He has worked as Senior Vice President for Product Management at Healthline.com and Founder and President of product consultancy buzzhit!. He has also held senior positions at Knight-Ridder, Ofoto, MyFamily.com, Adobe and PointCast.

According to data from Compete, Ask.com and Dictionary.com combined for over 39 million unique visitors in the U.S. for the month of September.

The IAC owned property has introduced "Ask Deals," a proprietary database of more than 1 million savings offers from national and local retailers across hundreds of product categories.

The Ask homepage now features a new tab labeled "Deals" for users who only want to view the best offers online. The Ask Deals database is continuously updated to provide users with the most current savings offers.

Ask Deals is powered by the company’s proprietary "Deal Detector" technology, which uses Ask’s search technology to scan online promotions, store circulars, and around 40 coupon sites.

The Deal Detector also searches user-generated content on forums, message boards, and blogs to find popular deals people are sharing with each other. Ask Deals filters out low-value, invalid, and expired offers.

"In a tough economy and with the holidays approaching, Ask Deals arrives at just the right time for consumers as a one-stop shop for value. It’s the answer our users are looking for, too, since searches for coupons on Ask have shot up almost 50 percent in 2009," said Scott Garell, President, Ask Networks.

"Ask Deals saves consumers time and money through relevant, high-quality savings built right into our unique Ask search results page. By introducing our ‘search stimulus package’ with Ask Deals, we aim to lift a burden for consumers and make a meaningful impact in their lives."

The goal of Ask’s partnership with Anchor Intelligence is to protect its advertisers and partners from paying for fraudulent clicks.

"Through our partnership with Anchor Intelligence, Ask.com can further apply these fundamental priorities to the experience of our advertising customers," said Mark Stockford, CIO, Ask.com

"This move demonstrates Ask.com’s commitment to providing advertisers across the marketplace with the most valuable, impactful, and reliable advertising traffic available online."

The ClearMark software classifies traffic according to quality and works to identify machines that have been compromised and used for malicious activity.

Earlier this year Ask partnered with Symantec to provide users ratings about the safety of sites before they visit.

Ask also partnered with NASCAR to become the official search engine for the sport. Ask has plans to launch about a dozen more vertical search engines this year that will also focus on sports and other topics.

Ask currently has 4 percent of the search market according to Hitwise.