Ask is putting your pages into frames

[robzilla]

This is the first time I've seen this on Ask, but right now whenever I click on a listing in their SERPs, the page is framed with an Ask logo, search box and a bunch of "related searches" at the top. There's also a "Return to Ask.com" text link and a small [x] button that allows you to either hide the frame for now or to never display it again. This annoys me as both a user and a webmaster, and overall just seems a little desperate. Your thoughts?

[LifeinAsia]

Lower tier search engines have been doing it for years. I guess that just shows how low Ask has sunk.

Either accept it or put a frame breaker on your pages.

[skipfactor]

I was going to say I would be miffed if I were an advertiser, but after checking, they (wisely) don't frame advertiser sites. Guess I need to frame bust ALL pages on most sites...

[pageoneresults]

Another one bites the dust as they say. You don't see much discussion about Ask these days and this will probably be the last BIG BANG as they move to the Search Engine Graveyard (the SEG). Maybe this forum should be marked as deprecated now?

[skipfactor]

I would deprecate it when they (last-gasp) stick ads in their frame. Jeeves is panhandling in an old tattered tux, reminiscent of Dan Ackroyd in the blackened Santa suit in "Trading Places"...

[jdMorgan]

I just checked yesterday, and results in my sector looked very, very good compared to a few months ago. And I still get more traffic from Ask than from MSN/Live...

YMMV,
Jim

[skipfactor]

I think most of us would love to see Ask succeed. They're sort of the little green engine that could, and it's disappointing when they do stupid stuff.

[jdMorgan]

They've been framing results on and off for years, though. Here's some of the oldest JS on my sites:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">if (parent.frames.length > 0) top.location.replace(document.URL);</script>

Jim

[skipfactor]

>>on and off for years

Did not know that. As usual, thanks for the enlightenment, Jim!

[caribguy]

Thanks robzilla & jd!

Helped me discover a bug in my frame buster when the 3rd party site includes the url of the site it's framing as part of the query string.

e.g. hxxp://www.ask.com/?q=widget&u=http://www.example.com

[eeek]

Lower tier search engines have been doing it for years.

Google does it too (on image searches).