I have been pleased with Ask's revamping of their search results. The
only real way to increase market share is to differentiate themselves
from the rest of the pack. I think they have done this by introducing
a richer variety of results, including video, images, wikipedia
entries etc.

With that said, it still bothers me that they line up a great number
of sponsored results atop the web page results. This deceiving
practice diminishes the long-term potential for the search engine.

Also, notice that ComScore recorded an increase in Ask's search market
share by 20 basis points from August to September.

I encourage the sharing of any opinions on Ask's future in the short,
mid, or long term.

Service magic sux. Many of the contractors have been burned by service
magic in different ways  I hear tales of credit cards being wrung up
for no reason. crappy leads that that they have to call back to
customer service to get their money back on taking hours to complet
over the phone and many times the leads are wrong #s or the homeowners
dont know totally unaware that anyone requested a quote at all..
Lending tree going down the drain along with the mortgage debacle.
Ask.com thinking 4.76% of market is good.(hitwise #s for october),I
would stay far from this stock until the mortgage market
settles........