Ask.com has come up with a positive news that would be great for the search world. It has recently unveiled the proprietary database of 300 million Q&A pairs for the users in the United Kingdom and United States.

Breaking news: Ask.com is not going to renew its contract with Looksmart. This step can be a big blow to Looksmart's revenue. Ask.com listings had generated quite a revenue for Looksmart Publisher solutions, around 89% in Q1 2009 alone.

The partnership which began in 2005 will end in December 2009, with no news of further extension. There had been no announcement or news release from Ask.com in this regard.

It seems Ask.com cannot have enough and be satisfied. The site has been remodeled and redesigned several times within past 4-5 years. Following Microsoft Live search suit ask.com has also started to add live hot spots as part of advertisement stint. From changing its logo to name to skins now Ask.com is using new advertising strategy. Once known as Ask Jeeves it has evolved to use the shorter version ask. Moreover Ask.com had recently restructured its homepage to come up with a clean fresh look as shown below.

Wall Street Journal recently reported that Ask.com CEO Jim Safka is leaving the firm. It is believed that the decision was based on personal reasons. Jim will most probably become the head of Chegg, Inc., which gives textbooks to students on rent.

Safka took over as the Ask's CEO in the early January 2008, replacing Jim Lanzone. As WSJ points out, Ask's market share has mostly remained flat during Safka's rein, with just under a 4% share of the search market in the US.

Just a few days ago, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced their collaboration to support a new Web standard “Canonical URL Tag” to abolish duplicate content from the Internet world.

Now, Ask.com has announced its intentions to go Canonical! Here is the example of the screen shot of the tag, provided by Ask.com:

Is Ask really serious about search? That's the question that a majority of Ask users are asking these days. Some think that the search engine offers quality search results and others think it is not able to meet most of the expectations on time! The debate seems to be going no where.

But now a new post at the “Ask's official blog” states that Ask is making relevant efforts to improve its search index and efficiency for all its users out there:

Ask.com recently came up with some advancements to their semantic search technology.

The search engine introduced a couple of new semantic technologies such as DADS(SM) (Direct Answers from Databases), DAFS(SM) (Direct Answers from Search), and AnswerFarm(SM).

This is the last month of the year and top searches lists have begun to roll out. Yahoo and ask.com, both have revealed the hottest searches for the year as per their search engines.

At Yahoo, entertainment conquered the chart:

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)
3. Barack Obama
4. Miley Cyrus
5. RuneScape
6. Jessica Alba
7. Naruto
8. Lindsay Lohan
9. Angelina Jolie

Ask.com has released version 11 of their new search engine today.

Techmeme is geared up with all the coverage of the news item, along with the main articles currently from the NY Times and News.com.

“We have rebuilt the Ask site from the ground up,” said Mr. Safka, who was earlier the chief executive of Match.com.

If you are one of the overly concerned and protective parents, who are almost always worried about your child's online experience, then there is a great news for you!

According to Search Engine Watch, Ask.com has relaunched their dedicated children's web portal, known as AskKids.com. The all new revamped AskKids displays suggested searches and images in the sidebars .