• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 6, 2009

Ask.com made it easier Tuesday to search and discover discounts on hundreds of items through a search tool it dubbed AskDeals. Consumers can search a database of more than one million deals that refresh daily. The deals aim to save consumers money on merchandise from national and local merchants across hundreds of product categories, from travel to apparel at Best Buy, Macy's and other popular stores.

The search engine scans the Web for the best prices. It merges about 40 of the largest retail stores and online coupon sites, such as fatwallet.com. Algorithms organize the best money-saving offers on the results page, eliminating the need for consumers to search multiple sites.

Sites that refresh content daily and have the best deals will index in search results first, according to Scott Kim, chief technology officer at Ask.com, an operating business of IAC/InterActiveCorp (IAC). "If we have a high confidence that what you're looking for is a good deal, we show it to you at the top of the results," he says. "The searches not only return the name and location of the store, but the price, too."

One of the biggest challenges was to quickly identify and remove the deals as they expire or are no longer valid. Another was to eliminate the invalid deals that end up on the Web, such as spam or garbage content.

Kim says the "cleaning" tool is part of Ask's Deal Detector technology, which relies on the company's core search algorithms to scan millions of online promotions, store circulars and coupon sites. The technology also crawls user-generated content on community forums, message boards and blogs to find the popular deals that consumers are sharing with each other. The editorial team plan to make spot buys across the Web to confirm the specials.

Similar to other search results, the algorithm that detects how often sites change content determines the frequency with which Ask.com's crawlers index sites. If Ask finds a site that doesn't change content often, it will rarely refresh the crawl.

Kim likens the speed in which the crawler indexes sites to a snowball rolling down a hill. "The more snow on the ball, the faster it will go," he says.

Ask will highlight three specials at the top of the search page. Consumers can click through to a complete listing. Filters by category and brands appear in the right rail under related searches. For example, search on "Pants" and you might get "Hem Pants Instructions," "Pressing a Pant Crease,' and "Poopy Pants." A feature lets consumers share deals with friends on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. Another provides email alerts on the latest deals.

Kim says Ask will gain some revenue from a rev-share deal, but the hope is that giving consumers a better experience will increase searches across its network. More consumers conducting more searches could boost search share and advertising revenue.

Americans conducted 13.9 billion searches in August 2009, up 3% sequentially. Google sites accounted for 9 billion searches -- followed by Yahoo at 2.7 billion, Microsoft sites at 1.3 billion, Ask Network at 541 million, and AOL at 415 million, according to comScore.

Ask also will offer themed deal-of-the-day skins for the search engine. On the first day of the launch, the search engine will transform its home page into an infomercial where the scene provides products that people can click on to get more information about an item. While a bit reminiscent of Microsoft's Bing, the Ask.com home page might sport a scenic landscape with people walking through the park wearing sweaters and scarves on a brisk fall day. Clicking on their clothing identifies a deal or savings at a specific store.