• by Laurie Petersen , June 5, 2007

Ask.com today unveiled Ask3D, a re-engineered version of its search engine featuring a three-panel layout and promise of "instant gettification" by offering people a quicker route to what they need, without forcing them to keep clicking around.

The objective, said Doug Leeds, vice president of product management for the wholly-owned unit of IAC/InterActive Corp., is to turn occasional Ask.com users into more frequent searchers. With Ask.com now ranked a distant fourth behind its competitors with a low single-digit share of search, the redesign is not likely to have any significant impact on the overall market.

Advertising will not change either, Leeds said, with Ask.com continuing to feature three paid search listings in a beige tinted box between its "Smart Answers" crafted by a human editor, and the remaining search results.

"Our strategy is completely to focus on search, not on search as a monetization tool for everything else where it becomes an afterthought," he said. "Google Universal Search is an example of how Google doesn't know how to innovate in search anymore."

Consumers who used Ask3D ranked 10 points higher on their satisfaction rating than those who used Ask.com, added Leeds, who started work on the project when he joined the company from Yahoo a year ago.

The consolidated content display from a new "morph" matching and ranking algorithm and some human intervention give Ask3D a distinct point of differentiation from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live.

The new design, a year in the making, is built on the fact that it takes on average 11 minutes to get a question answered using any search engine. In its three-panel layout, Ask3D seeks to put a full array of relevant and customized information behind each search.

Users are not forced to keep clicking and backing up to fine-tune their search. Suggested paths of action and related content all appear at the top search result level.

In addition to text, groupings of images, videos and related listings all appear at the top level and are previewable through a pre-roll viewing. The popular Ask.com Binoculars featuring previewing sites has been enhanced to add the size and estimated download time before clicking through.

The "morph"-generated results in the far right panel (where most other search engines list paid advertising listings) vary depending on the nature of the search. A city search yields weather, local news and local businesses. A performer search yields photos, playable songs, and videos, among other things.

Content partners include Wikipedia for encyclopedia entries, iLike for music clips, and Blinkx for video search.

Test searches varied from a highly refined experience to one of equal or lesser quality than found on Google.

In a statement announcing the redesign, Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone described it as a "complete redefinition of the search experience" and a "leap towards the future of search."

"I think it's a big improvement over Ask before. They've packed a lot of content into the search results," said analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. When comparing Google search results to Ask3D results, "in certain situations, the additional information is very helpful. It other cases the results are not better.

"It will probably get more usage," Sterling predicted, but not enough to have any kind of impact on market share. "The reason really goes to the power of the Google brand."

In early May, IAC launched a multimillion-dollar Ask.com awareness campaign touting the "algorithms," and will introduce elements of the new search engine explaining why this matters in coming months, Leeds said. "Our algorithm has a personality," he added.

IAC's media and advertising business, which includes Ask.com, Ask.com UK and Fun Web Products, saw a 43% first-quarter revenue boost--from $117.6 million to $168.1 million over a year earlier. Operating profit was $10.5 million, compared with a $6.4 million loss in the same quarter in 2006.

IAC chief Barry Diller has publicly stated his goal of a 10% share for Ask, which hovers at around 5%.