Apparently, Ask.com now displays five sponsored results for several keyword searches, making the organic results appear below the fold, observes Barry. This is quite similar to the organic results that appeared below the fold before Jeeves was dropped.

Reportedly, the search for the keyword "mp3 players" on Internet Explorer, shows five sponsored results, see below:

However, when searched on either Safari or Firefox, it is likely to yield only three ads to feature at the top, see below:

Search engine industry is awesomely competitive, as all search engines, big an small are always on a roll to enhance an average user's experience. Of late Ask has turned out quite a few fresh tweaks to its services. During late last year it was the Ask Eraser, then there was the Voice Activated Mobile Directions Feature!, Customized Ask.Com Homepage and the recently launched BigNews, all of these efforts did translate into success for the company.

The comScore data released today shows that Ask.com is making great leaps in the search queries. The data analyses further tell that Ask has seen more growth than Google, MSN, or Yahoo in the last month (January 2008) than compared to the prior month's volume.

Ask has just launched a news search service called BigNews, "Ask BigNews is a search and browse service that helps you find and track the most important and most talked about stories in the news." The service is similar to Google News or Yahoo! News services.

Ask's BigNews makes use of the 'BigFactor' to find the best stories to follow. The BigFactor has four key dimensions:

Former Google executive, Cesar Mascaraque has been hired by Ask.com as its new European managing director starting from 4 February 2008.

Mascaraque will be responsible for the European operations for Ask.com. His previous experience at Google as head of strategic partnerships and business development for southern Europe makes him an ideal choice for the post. Before joining Google, Mascaraque was also the co-founder and director for an online asset finance platform Finexia.com.

Ask.com has launched a new facility, in case you don't like the backgrounds already available on Ask.com. The new feature lets you upload any image of your choice, a family snap or your company logo perhaps.

This move comes as an upgrade to Ask3D, launched last year. The feedback from Ask users lead the product management team to develop and extend this facility, "..many skins users requested upgrades-the most-requested one being the ability to allow them to upload their own images. Today, we're happy to announce just that upgrade," said Erik Collier, Director of Product Management,Ask.com

The year 2008 has begun with top executives leaving the top search engine companies. A couple of days back it was Yahoo!'s CPO, (Chief Performance Officer) who left the company to join Google. See: Yahoo!'s Chief Performance Officer Goes to Google!, now it's the CEO of Ask.com who's leaving his post, the announcement came late on Wednesday. He's not joining any of Ask's corporate rival search engines though, he would join the venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures as entrepreneur-in-residence.

Both LookSmart and Ask have sent out click fraud settlement letters. The letters were sent for the class action suit that both the companies are trying to reach to some conclusion for quite some time.

Recently, Ask.com has added a new voice-activated facility to its Mobile Directions service. The new feature is known as "Click to Speak."

According to CNet Newsblog a group of privacy advocates have asked Ask.com to make changes to the recently released askEraser so as to protect the privacy of the users better.

A letter addressed to the Ask.com Chief Executive said: