Sina launches 'iAsk' search engine

Making a play with their internally developed engine

[JerryOdom]

More and more news coming out of the giant to the east

[forbes.com...]

BEIJING (AFX) - China's Internet portal operator Sina Corp said it has launched an internally-developed search engine 'iAsk' to establish itself as a leader in China's online search market.

[bill]

Thanks for posting that report JerryOdom.

iAsk [iask.com] has a very simple design with all of the standard categories you'd expect from an SE: Web, News, Images, Music, Video, & Local. There is also a Knowledge search, but I haven't really gone through that.

The article link suggested that iAsk also handles English, and it does, but without an English interface. English SERPs are notably dominated by sites based in China and Taiwan. A quick run-through the SERPs seemed to be limited to sites in China. We will have to wait to see whether they expand their focus.

Any opinions on this new SE?

[matimer]

Hmm interesting tactic using the domain "iask.com" wonder how much it pisses offs Mr. Diller's idea of killing off the butler for the untrademarkable domain name ask.com instead

[bill]

I thought they were changing the name of Ask Jeeves anyway...I wonder if that name will raise any hackles over at ask.com.

I'm still looking at how they organize their results. It looks like they're giving preference to Chinese and Taiwanese IPs in the KWs I've looked at. Overt SEO and keywords in the domain seem to work well for the English SERPs. The Chinese SERPs seem to favor on-page factors.