An Open Letter To Ask.com – Where Is It?

Dear Ask.com:

I’ve been watching your most recent television ads that show off your blended search results by demonstrating a search for "eagles of death metal" and felt compelled to write a blog post about the commercial.

First, of course, I had to try out your demonstration search. So I typed "eagles" and out popped some search suggestions from the search box but as I continued to type and my search filled out to "eagles 0f"…, you no longer had any suggestions for me:

Really?!? No suggestions, even though you’re currently running an ad using "eagles of death metal" as a demonstration search? Couldn’t you have reasonably expected that people would conduct that search as a result of your TV commercial?

I admit I’ve been critical of you in the past but this time I was planning on writing about your new ad and that you too are offering blended search results.  So I went to YouTube and searched for the new ad but all I got were old TV spots. I widened my search by doing the same at Google Video. No luck. I tried iFILM and Yahoo! Video and DailyMotion and MetaCafe. Still no luck.

Then I had the belatedly brilliant idea of searching you, Ask.com. Surely you would be able to find the video for your own TV commercials. Not so much:

Not only did you not find your most current ad for me, you found none of your TV ads at all, at least not as blended results.

It’s not that I don’t like you, I’m just disappointed in you, Ask.com. You told me how great you are at finding stuff, but you can’t even find stuff in your own backyard.

There are a zillion people smarter than I who can help you improve your algorithm but I could lend you a hand on the video marketing side of things.

Give me a call.

See Also:

• Ask.com TV Ad Targeted To SEMs?
• Yahoo Upgrades Search Engine, Blends Search Results