Do you remember going to Ask.com in the oldern days long before Google started playing god with the interwebs? I do – but yes, that was a long time ago. Now Ask.com has reinvigorated its service by introducing a new focus on the social.
Along with a new interface and improved semantic searches, Ask.com will offer a Q&A product which will draw from 500 million indexed questions and answers, and will ask users for the answers too. Instead of just linking to websites which might contain the answers, Ask.com will be delivering real answers from real people. We expect this new community aspect to bring more subjectivity, discussion and raw opinion than you would expect from a search engine.
Scott Garrell, president of Ask.com, is confident in the new approach, based on the “the rapid growth of the social Web and the shift in consumer search behavior”. Indeed, the social realm does play an increasing role in where we get our online information. There is even speculationwithin the SEO community that Google might draw on social media information as well as the traditional SEO factors like relevant content and links.
Good SEO happens very gradually, over a long period of time – and the more natural it looks to Google, the more credible. So naturally, if a website deserves to be on page 1, it should be all the buzz across the social sphere too. Building real connections with clients and customers on social networks is what SEO is becoming – and considering Google already does real-time searches of our favourite social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, now is a very good time to start socia lising for your business.