AskAlex

Hope for us all

[NFFC]

Never heard of them before, anyone getting any taffic from Alex.

AskAlex [askalex.co.uk]

UK search engine's value soars to £15m [eonews.net]

Lets hope Alex asks someone else to design his next site

[oldtimer]

I've not come across it either. They certainly could upgrade their image. No harm in trying them though.

[engine]

Oh yes, it's been around for a while. Don't get too excited. I've seen very little traffic. No, take that back, can't say I've seen any.
I did, a long time ago, get a call from a sales person offering an upgrade. I declined. Perhaps that is why the referrals are so low.
Askalex had a few strategic partners, some time back, and the partners offered links to them.
I always felt askalex was a bit like eyp or yell giving a selected list of entries and a difficult to use directory.

Unless something takes off - don't get too excited.

[Videoman]

I've always thought that ASKALEX was in some way related to the Thomson Online- both pretty useless (for me). I think it is the DB that the business sections of "This is" uses. "This is Essex" claims to have twenty million hits a minute (or some such crap)and is another wonderful source of non-referals!!!! It was at one time the most slowest site I'd ever visited......incidentally still waiting for that elusive first hit from "Essex Pages"

[makemetop]

Ask Alex is now the base for Freeserve's Business Directory www.ineed.co.uk which is askalex with a freeserve front end. Boy, did they get sold a pup. Type in web promotion and go and look at the number 1 listing! But, bet it's boosted Alex's back pocket!

[engine]

Well spotted. it's been such a long time since i last paid them any attention.
Perhaps i'll have to now. :(

[waterfields]

I know I'm a late to this posting but the greatest thing about AskAlex is they're greedy. They have sold the directory over and over so if you're in it (like me) we might start seeing some results.

[engine]

Waterfields, welcome to the forums.
Have they been sold, and to whom?
What do you think of their directory?

[waterfields]

Hi again. I think basically it's ok, site owners can change there own keywords and description and people looking for a particular company can easiely find them, but the actual Askalex layout isn't very good. For instance I'm not fan of frames. It's not easy to see what's going on in the frame and if you go to Google or other engines and look through for Alex you can often find just the side frame, which doesn't do anyone any good. I use the internet quite a lot and keep finding the ineed, ifind network. Maybe they're affiliates, I don't quite know but the fact is it's becoming very large.

[makemetop]

I'm in Ask Alex and its DB is used by Freeserve's ineed plus D & B and several other portals. I have a priority listing (you have to pay £150+ per year for a link to your site) which comes up top for searches on my keywords which are popular search terms on other SEs. In the last 3 months I have had 1 referral in my logs and 1 phone call from someone trying to sell me SEO!

The listing is pretty worthless without having a link to your site - and the link to your site is pretty worthless without traffic. If things improve over the next 9 months and it becomes a valuable listing I will (as always) let you know.

But right now shades of Essex Pages!

[waterfields]

I've had reasonable traffic from the listing, priority as well, but not much. I have to say that since i signed up people have phoned up to try and sell advertising as well. One mag company called internet money and I've not heard of them. They were asking about £1000 for half a page!

[georged]

>One mag company called internet money
Yes, we've heard of this, and used it. You can do the advertising half page thing, or you can buy an editorial, which let's you pontificate on about whatever you like (RIP bill or whatever) and sing your own praises at the same time.
It's useful in that you can leave the mag lying about the office in front of clients, handily open at the page your company's on, so the clients think that they are dealing with a co. with a good media profile.
We get the mag regularly, it's quite good.

[Videoman]

Hi Waterfields
We had a thread a few months back because I was convinced that one SE was only generating "sellers" and not "buyers"....looks like we got another....but having to pay for the pleasure as well YUK. Whatever happened to just35.com - nominated as Comedians of the year??

I do have a remedy- Its a .wav of Billy Connolly in full flow which says Go'n F~~~ yourself! One click of the mouse (or is it two) telephone by the speakers and.........

I did once get a call from an irate salesman that I asked if I'd got any more clips he could hear!!!

I did get a job that came from a local company and the guy who phoned specifically said he'd found me on AskAlex - why he couldn't use Yellow Pages defied belief :)

In my situation if a SE or a Directory only produces an odd enquiry its better than nothing but like Search UK (Searchengine.com now) or Tapaz etc they just dont fulfil the expectation. I wonder if the % of hits we receive is in proportion to their market share of traffic so if AV does 20x times more etc....if you follow a Monday morning analogy.
Time for my tablets!!