‘Question of the Day’ Appears on Ask.com Homepage

Posted by on Feb 1, 2010 in Search Engine Optimisation | Comments Off

Over at Ask.com today, there’s a “Question of the Day” box over the main search box. Apparently, today’s question is “How many women have received the Medal of Honor?” We haven’t seen this on Ask.com before, though we have seen hints of it with specific ad campaigns, such as the one for the Night at the Museum sequel last spring.

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Click on the question and it takes you to a page, where the answer appears at the top and then organic results and other Ask features such as related searches appear as well:

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My initial reaction:

  1. Ask is harnessing the power of questions. They get more queries as questions (as a percentage) than any other search engine.
  2. Builds on new Q&A feature launched last year. Maximizes Q&A database they’ve been building over time.
  3. Today’s question is targeted at women. Ask ran a successful breast cancer awareness campaign last fall and gained female searchers as a result.
  4. Reminiscent of “word of the day” for Dictionary.com, which Ask acquired in 2008.
  5. Better than Bing’s HotSpots – which are only visible when you mouseover specific areas. Plus, this question engages site visitors in specific actions.

Those are just my speculations. We’ll report more as details become available. In the meantime, what’s your reaction to the new Ask.com homepage? Leave a comment below to let us know.

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