Ask.com has been in the search game for a long time and has a history of novel ideas and innovations which have been copied by their larger search cousins. Unfortunately for Ask.com, this approach hasn’t helped grow their market share (Ask.com is currently in fourth place with about 6% of the market).

But “Try, try, try again” seems to be the mantra for Ask.com. Today sees the rollout of an updated version of its search engine - results are returned from the Web and “structured” sources of data in certain categories like entertainment, health and jobs.

Also included is an index of Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers. Ask.com Chief Executive Jim Safka said, “Some of the best content is coming from individuals, not necessarily from professional publishers,”.

Other changes include a return to two panel layout that was dropped last year in favour of three columns. If you liked the three column feel you can always select this option on the search results page. Apparently, the shiney, new Ask.com is faster and returns more relevant results for common queries than the last incarnation.

To be honest, as a search engine user I don’t care if the results come back 1.3 or 1.4 seconds. For me relevancy wins hands down. It’s good to see that Ask.com is still in the game but I don’t think these changes alone will be enough to see a significant rise in their market share.

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