“The idea that we’re going to become a ‘women’s site’ is not correct,” says Graham. Ask says that the original AP report had an erroneous headline, and it’s pretty much been downhill from there.

But the reality is that:

what we’ve found from our research is that there’s a sizeable group of our core user base that is women. This core audience comes for certain types of searches, certain categories—reference (dictionary, thesaurus, etc.), health and entertainment. Our new strategy is to focus on building up our ability to render good answers in those categories for our core audience.

Graham emphasized that Ask.com will work on providing answers “quicker, faster and in a more meaningful, scaling way.” (I can see the new slogan now: “Ask. Get answers.” Love it.). Providing answers, however, doesn’t mean that they’ll return to the natural-language, ask-us-a-question model that’s so last century. They’ll continue to work on improving their answers for queries on generic, single-word terms, statements and questions.

The best news of all, of course, is the news that “the idea that we’re not going to be a search engine anymore is not correct. We’ll continue to cater to all sorts of people who come to search. . . . We’ll continue to be a great search engine, but a great search engine with a new focus.”

While today’s statements may sound dangerously like the “realignment” or “refocusing” buzzwords that some so dreaded, I believe Ask when they say that they’re not abandoning search or seeking to alienate any of their users. Instead, they’ll “continue to cater to all sorts of people who come to search.”

However, they have decided to strive toward an “emotional connection with our core audience.” Acknowledging that it’s not wise to try to be all things to all people, and that people are looking for differentiation in search, Ask will focus on their core audience, who comes to them three times as often as they do other search engines, because that’s where their core growth is.

They’re “not giving up on bettering Google,” but trying to

become the first place that customers come to when seeking answers. We’re going to be the best at that; we’ll be the first place that they come to for that. We’ll keep bringing them back in a strategic and meaningful way.

Naturally, if they’re successful in this, these efforts will be good for marketers working through Ask as well. Focusing on a “highly active, dedicated and loyal” core audience can help marketers understand their traffic and what kind of appeals they should make to them, in addition to increasing traffic from Ask.

Graham acknowledged that they’ve seen some great successes with the innovations from 2007, including Ask3D, and they’ll continue to innovate in search in 2008—and we should watch for exciting announcements from Ask in the coming weeks and months. They plan to “innovate in a way to connect emotionally with users who know us and love us and have done so for a long time.”

CEO Jim Safka did mention a community-generated answers aspect to Ask and Graham confirmed that some user-generated content will become important in “building answers.” He said that they have researched their core audience and determined that this is something that they are, in fact, looking for. Right now, however, the search engine will remain the “central product,” though they’ll “build out around their core audience” as well.

I think that this strategy sounds much better than what we were hearing about earlier this week. By focusing on their core audience, Ask hopes to make their loyal users even more dedicated to increase their strength. Then they hope to grow from that position of strength, positioning themselves for growth in the search market. As long as we continue to see search innovation from Ask, I wish them luck!

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The search engines have been relatively quiet the past couple of weeks. Previous SES San Jose shows usually give the search and marketing industry some new products and services to try, and opinions to discuss.

We expect the same this year, having already heard from one major search provider that is eager to clarify the implications of another industry firm’s announcement scheduled during SES San Jose.

Keynotes for this year’s edition of SES San Jose should be entertaining. Mayer’s talk should expand on Google’s idea of universal search.

Lanzone’s talk may be similar, as he plans to discuss Ask3D, Ask’s approach to universal search, as part of a Q&A session with conference organizer Chris Sherman.

“I may breakdance, if asked,” Lanzone quipped in an email to WebProNews about his keynote.

We’ll have a camera on him if he chooses to break out and do ‘Electric Boogaloo 3: AIIGH! Call An Ambulance’ at the show. Spin on your head, Jim.

The search engine cited a need to support greater query volumes and more computing power to drive its latest iteration, Ask3D. That new version of Ask delivers universal search results culled from sources like news, images, and videos, along with conventional web links.

Ask said the datacenter will be within the TITAN complex at Moses Lake. That facility provides a secure environment with zero carbon emissions along with using hydroelectric power and a low-energy cooling design.

Other major Internet players have found reasons to like Washington state. Google and Yahoo also bought huge tracts of land there, and Microsoft, long a Washington resident, did likewise.

The right hand panel of Ask3D has got features like Encyclopedia, Images, Dictionary, Recent Posts from blogs & RSS Feeds, Music Guides, News, Television, the correct time, Videos, Weather, and Songs with in-line play. The search process at Ask3D is done with the help of Morph and In-line functions.

Morph is a new content-matching algorithm that changes the SERPs according to the unique query made by the user. Morph looks in hundreds of structured databases for a particular query and it also checks the previous user behavior for that query. After a detailed analysis, it returns the most relevant matches and ranks the modules on the page in context with the query. And this ranking is done on the basis of relevant signals within the content like keywords, tags, freshness, etc and an aggregate user behavior for a particular query.

The process does not stop here. For more advanced search results, there is In-line functions where one find options like vertical search, rollovers & more. One can find these modules on the right side panel. Here a user can interact and search within them.

Additional features include Image Mouseovers, Video Mouseovers, Music Clips, Geo-Targeted Businesses and Event Listings. These cool gadgets are designed to save your time. To know more about the features have a look at the blog posted by Ask.com

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Whatever the speculation, companies need to figure out how to best adjust their search marketing strategies to maintain a competitive advantage. One way to do that is to focus the right proportion of effort on standard text optimization as well as the optimization and promotion of all other digital assets.

Both Google’s Universal Search and the new Ask3D interface that show users more information from more sources (news, images, products, video, etc) in the first page of results illustrates the need to consider more media types than standard text documents. There are already quite a few opinions on what effect such a combination of data sources presented within first page search results will have on the future of SEO. Google offers some advice here.

Universal search and personalized search means the kinds of search results SEO consultants have become accustomed to and optimizing for are either on the way out or on the decline. The task of optimizing any electronic files that can be crawled, indexed, categorized and sorted is where the opportunity lies. This is more than just optimizing social media, it’s a more holistic perspective on helping content become easier to find via search than simply relying on text documents. Most organizations produce an array of different content types and search engines are doing their best to index that content so they can run ads next to it.

Optimizing holistically starts with an inventory of a company’s digital assets. Text, images, audio and video are all considered along with the incorporation of keyword messaging across company communications. Matching digital assets with channels of distribution provides marketers with even more opportunity to reach customers since each channel can drive traffic independently as well as improve standard search visibility.

This all sounds fine a good but the reality is that it can be very difficult and complex to implement with a mid to large sized organization. Substantial changes may be necessary with content creation, approval and publishing processes along with the need for ongoing education. However, the upside is that a substantial increase in media types indexed and linking to a company web site will provide the kind of advantage standard SEO no longer offers.

As long as there are search engines, there will be some kind of optimization for improving search engine visibility. What companies need to consider are all the digital assets they have to work with to give both search engines and customers the information they’re looking for in the formats they’ll respond to.

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It doesn’t have to be that way. They noted how the first prototyping of what they wanted to do with the Ask3D relaunch took place on AskX. The idea was to get better results to people.

“Their eyes dance down the results page as quickly as possible, mouse cursor flailing to quickly peek if the site on the other side of the click is truly meaningful,” they said. “We’ve been calling it “Search Skim” and it implies a lot of wasted effort in every search.”

As an example, they demonstrated how a search for torch-singing Amy Winehouse varied from a query for weather in the Big Apple. In the three-columned Ask3D approach for search results, the left and center columns of conventional results, including options for tweaking the query, appear quickly.

On the right side of the results, Ask’s Morph technology brings up the more focused responses it can deliver for that query. Concert images and song clips appear for the sultry singer, while the New York results show city maps and local time to accompany the weather information in the Smart Answer area.

By presenting this kind of information, Ask wants to show people they don’t have to skim a lengthy list of blue links to find what they need. CEO Jim Lanzone will be happy if this translates into existing users performing more queries per month.

Ask3D doesn’t have to carve a big slice out of Google’s search market share. It just has to encourage the Ask userbase to tap in some extra queries. The new approach looks like it will be worth it for those users.

Ask Morphs Into Ask3D

Gary Price, Ask’s director of online information resources, took us through a lengthy tour of the new Ask, which they have dubbed Ask3D. It uses the company’s new Morph technology, which means each search result page will be different depending on the query a user submits.

If you think this sounds a little like Google’s universal search approach, dismiss the comparison from your mind. Compared to what Ask is doing today, Google’s universal results look like the algorithm vomited data all over the SERPs.

Gary said the new Ask brings a lot to the end users without a lot of effort. The Ask home page offers visual cues to visitors, with icons for various searches displayed above the search box. You’ll see those icons again after doing a search.

As you type in a query, the search box lists suggestions; this was prototyped with AskX. A suggestion can be clicked to kick off the search. That brings back the three-columned search results page, for what Gary called a lot of information on simple results.

The left column contains the options to narrow or expand a search as desired. In the center, sponsored and organic search results are on display. If a relevant Smart Answer is available for a query, it will show up at the top of the column.

Over on the right column we see where Ask’s Morph technology comes into play. Depending on the query, those results could contain images, videos, news, even music tracks if you search for musicians.

Ask can deliver those results by tapping various databases of information. Such content from specialty databases are a particular passion for Gary, a self-described search geek. He said the Morph algorithm finds what it thinks will be of the most value for a query from among the databases it can tap.

There are actually two algorithms in play for a query. The Teoma technology that Ask has owned for some time drives the organic results, while the Morph algorithm comes into play for the right-column ones.

The icons that appear on the main Ask page show up alongside their related Morph results. The visual cue helps reinforce the idea that people can find particular results as desired. In each box of additional results on the right side, a magnifying glass icon can be clicked to allow people to search for more of that type of result (news, video, etc) directly from the page.

Another icon, the binoculars that show up next to regular search results, used to allow people to mouseover them and see a small image of the destination websites from that link. That feature has been updated to what Gary called ‘Binoculars 2.0′.

In addition to the snapshot of the destination site, the binoculars show the load time for the site at 56k, if the site uses Flash, and if it has popups.

Ask created a new feature that shows up when their Smart RSS technology finds a feed associated with the result appearing in the Smart Answer area atop the results page. People can subscribe to the feed right from those results; this feature has been a regular request from Ask users.

The efforts Ask has put forth with Ask3D should save users time, effort, and aggravation, as Gary said. Much of that effort took place with the tuning of metadata associated with content. Even more tweaking took place with the video results Ask can deliver.

When searching for videos, people will see what Ask calls “videos from select sources” first. These are results that reside on more authoritative sites. Doing a mouseover of a video thumbnail causes it to animate. Searchers can expand their search to find videos from all sources by clicking a link.

Ask has been a much more compelling search option for the past couple of years. The Ask3D update has made it even more of one now.