Digital Media

Ask.com said on Tuesday that its chief executive, Jim Safka, is leaving the company after 18 months in the job.

"Jim has decided to move on from Ask.com, following the recent passing of his brother which has led him to re-evaluate his personal and professional priorities. We wish him the very best and thank him for his efforts at Ask.com," Ask spokeswoman Mary Osako said in a statement. "Ask will be led by Scott Garell, who has been promoted to President of Ask Networks, who has already been principally involved every day with the global business over the past 18 months as President of Ask.com."

In addition to Ask.com, the broader Ask Networks also covers the site's partner network and sponsored listings program as well as Dictionary.com.

Safka, a former Match.com CEO, took over as head of Ask in January 2008, after then-CEO Jim Lanzone departed as part of a shake-up at parent company InterActiveCorp.

"Jim has demonstrated tremendous leadership during his tenure at IAC, first at Match.com and most recently at Ask.com, where he helped the Ask Network become the 6th largest in the U.S. and created the foundation for a new growth strategy that is showing early positive traction," InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller said in an e-mail to the company's staff.

Safka's departure comes as Ask continues to badly trail its larger rivals in the search market. As of March, Ask had 2.1 percent of the U.S. search market, as compared to 10 percent for Microsoft, 15 percent for Yahoo and 64 percent for Google, according to Nielsen Online.

Garell, like Safka, joined Ask in January 2008. Before that, he served as CEO of IAC Consumer Applications & Portals. Before that he served as executive vice president of domestic sites and search for IAC. Prior to that, he worked at Computer Associates, Citysearch and Clorox.

Safka's departure was reported earlier on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal.

Update at 8:12 a.m. PST: Analyst comments and stock price added.

InterActiveCorp turned a profit in the fourth quarter but took a 7 percent revenue hit, amid a sharp downturn in its advertising and media business, the company said Tuesday.

Barry Diller's media conglomerate reported revenue of $351 million in the quarter, down from $378.9 million in the same quarter a year earlier. That performance missed Wall Street expectations of $368 million, analyst Imran Khan of J.P. Morgan said in a note.

The company, however, posted a profit of $227.4 million, or $1.57 a share, in the quarter, compared with a net loss of $369.9 million, or $2.53 a share, during the same period a year ago.

But when excluding the sale of one of its investments and the write-down of other investments, IAC posted a profit of 18 cents a share. Analysts were expected a profit of 20 cents a share on that basis, Khan said.

IAC was up less than 1 percent to $14.94 a share in morning trading.

During the quarter, the company's media and advertising businesses, such as Ask.com, Fun Web Products, Dictionary.com, and Citysearch, posted revenue of $183.7 million, a 19 percent decline compared with the year-ago quarter.

Khan's note also commented on IAC's weakness in media and advertising:

Revenue reflects a significant decline in network revenue, which we believe is due to increased competition from Google with this business line. We think other companies with similar exposure could also show weakness. Query declines at Ask.com reflect significantly lower marketing spend in the period. Revenue per query also declined due to fewer clicks per visit.

IAC attributed a portion of that decline to scaling back on some of its partnerships after it renewed its partnership with Google.

IAC's Match.com revenue fell a modest 3 percent to $88.1 million over the same period a year earlier. Despite the revenue decline, worldwide subscriber growth increased by 5 percent in the quarter, reaching its highest level of paid membership.

The company did post double-digit revenue growth in its ServiceMagic.com business and emerging businesses, such as Shoebuy.com, Pronto.com, Gifts.com, and InstantAction.com.

Maybe all our refined, enlightened interests are lost in the long tail, because Britney Spears once again was the most popular search subject in 2008 on Yahoo.

For Yahoo, Spears wasn't the only pop-culture icon in Yahoo's top 10 searches. Also on the list were Miley Cyrus at No. 4, Jessica Alba at No. 6, Lindsay Lohan at No. 7, and Angelina Jolie at No. 9.

Apparently a lot of people are curious about World Wrestling Entertainment, because WWE was No. 2. The online game RuneScape was No. 5, anime series Naruto was No. 7, and American Idol finished in 10th place on Yahoo's list.

Yahoo also broke down searches for various other subjects. For economic searches, the top 10 list started with IRS stimulus checks, then followed with oil prices, gold prices, gas prices, Dow Jones, Sallie Mae, stock market, AIG, foreclosures, and debt consolidation. The list reveals that people use general-purpose searches for everything ranging from how-to advice to the latest news.

In the people of politics, President-elect Barack Obama led the list. Next came Sarah Palin, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Ron Paul, John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mitt Romney.

AOL also shared its top search terms for 2008, though it didn't break out overall terms.

Ask.com also spotlighted popular 2008 searches, and has a few variations on the standard search categories. Its top questions are as follows:

1. How do I get pregnant?
2. How do I lose weight?
3. How do I write a resume?
4. How much is minimum wage?
5. How much is my car worth?
6. How do I change my name?
7. What is the meaning of life?
8. How do I register to vote?
9. Why is the sky blue?
10. How do I download videos?

And since Ask.com bought Dictionary.com earlier this year, it's releasing top search terms for that site. People's vocabulary expansion efforts concentrated on these terms: maverick, socialism, economy, recession, radical, cyclone, solace, realtor, environment, and potholes.

Apparently Google, which has shared search trends on its annual Zeitgeist list since 2001, didn't get the memo to release its results Monday, but expect it to cough up some new results soon--and, I hope, some of the accompanying graphs.

(Credit: Nielsen Online)

Google's quantity searches in the United States during July surged 16 percent over the last year, cementing the company's lead at the top of the market, according to statistics released Tuesday by Nielsen Online.

Google had 60 percent of the 8 billion searches in the month, Nielsen said. Yahoo, whose searches dropped 11 percent, had 17.4 percent of the market, and Microsoft, whose searches dropped 10 percent, had 11.9 percent of the market.

The overall search tally increased 3 percent from July 2007 to July 2008, the company said. Nielsen bases its statistics on the behavior of a panel of Internet users.

AOL's search queries dropped 9 percent over the year, leaving it with 4.6 percent share, and Ask.com's rose 13 percent, leaving it with 2 percent share, Nielsen said.

Google extended its lead in U.S. search market share.

(Credit: Hitwise)

Google's steadily increasing search share neared 70 percent in June in the United States, according to new figures released Tuesday by Hitwise.

Its share increased from 68.29 percent in May to 69.17 percent in June, the analyst firm said. Over the same period, Yahoo dropped from 19.95 percent to 19.62 percent and Microsoft dropped from 5.89 percent to 5.46 percent.

Fourth-place Ask.com has managed to eke out gains over the last year, though it slid from 4.23 percent to 4.17 percent from May to June.

Google crossed the 60 percent share threshold in July 2006, analyst Matt Tatham said, slid back the one month in August 2006, but has been north of 60 percent ever since September 2006.

Search share is important to the companies' business because it means there's a potentially larger inventory of search results against which advertisements can be sold.

The statistics are based on a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users, Hitwise said.