Can I count the ways

 I see from the fact that it is still everywhere that Ask.com is not taking a great deal of notice of the massive amount of negative feedback to its truly awful information revolution campaign. Well, aside from the fact it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I’d think it’s important we dig down into the detail of this whole sworded episode which must have left google quaking in their boots:

1. It’s not accessible (iframe on home page)
2. It’s not even accessible to engines (Ask hasn’t indexed the first sentence on the main page)
   

   Although funnily enough, Google can see it – if not ranking it very highly!

   

3. It’s got that whole “fixed height” thing that people from traditional media make digital agencies do becuase they think “people won’t scroll”. Ironic if the client’s a search engine.
4. Loads of nonsense text on the home page
5. Dropped navigation on “Why ask” page
6. The sign-up page is white text on a yellow background – completely unusable (am I the only person who’s signed up? – I had to use my decoder ring)
7. No t-shirt (due to high demand, I’ll bet)
8. Flogs and fake video blogs – full on, invented human beings with obnoxious invented marketing nonsense in them (Sell a couple more t-shirts and buy a copy of Cluetrain chaps).
9. Some fairly obvious fake comments.
10. Same title on every page (tut tut) and system generated page names !!! ?
11. Really annoying interface errors (scroll bars in the middle of pages, non-standard search buttons, incorrect ident top left)
12. The word “revolutionistas”
13. Spelling Google with a lower case “g”
14. Ask doesn’t even qualify as the “other search engine”. That’s Yahoo or Windows Live. Ask.com is the “unused search engine”.
15. This is supposed to sound like the way “real people speak”

“What could possibly make a sociology graduate, a computer engineering dropout, a silent expert of monkey peer groups and a genius handyman come together? Sheer determination & a shared passion to evolve the way people search, and a common love of jammy dodgers.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and take my medicine.