I received a lot of feedback in the comments section of that first article that ranged from, "I worked for RedZ and they were a compete scam" to "thank you for alerting me to this before I sent them my money". I am glad to all those that we could reach before they spend their money and I am providing this update to help further my quest to make everyone aware of their fraudulent practices and hopefully save others.
So, below is a collection of additional articles on the RedZ scam for your review:
What a year. comScore's new World Metric data shows some surprises all the way around. Microsoft properties still dominate user's time on the Web (September 2009 compared to September 2008).
For all of you who do not believe in the power of search, take a look here:
Search is where it is at, yet many, many agencies focus 90% of their efforts on everything else in the digital world. Hopefully these old timers will catch-up with those in the know.
Dogpile, a meta search engine owned by Infospace (along with WebFetch, Web Crawler, Meta crawler, Nation, Infospace, DoGreatGood search engines) provided this research in 2007, but it is still pretty interesting (and I just found this cool graphic representation that was updated on the Dogpile website, so I thought it was time to share...-)
Also, just a quick side note. Infospace recently got its flagship domain back from another company which it sold it to 2 years ago (a long story, so read about it here - InfoSpace looks to claw its way back into the search business). What I found interesting is that it beat both Google and Yahoo to integrating Twitter into it's search results without much fanfare - just an FYI.
First they merge with Old Navy, well not exactly, but their new 'Ask Deals' ads appear a bit Old Navy'ish' and they are now all about savings, much like Old Navy. Check out the ad below and make your own assessment...:-)
Next up, Ask decides to update it's blog - kind of. If you look at all the blog posts over the last 6 months there are a total of ten posts and probably only one of them is not self promotional (see July 15 post). Below is a list of all of them in case you care:
October 20, 2009 Ask Is 'Dancing on Air': “Who Wants a Deal? We Do, We Do!”
October 13, 2009 Get Smarter on the Go with Dictionary.com’s Free Dictionary & Thesaurus Application for BlackBerry October 06, 2009 Ask Deals: Your One-Click, One-Stop Shop for Savings is Here!
October 01, 2009 Ask.com Celebrates the 25th National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
September 14, 2009 Searching for a Cure: Ask.com and Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Partner in the Fight to End Breast Cancer
August 05, 2009 SES San Jose is here! August 10-14, 2009
July 15, 2009 What makes a search engine “semantic”?
July 14, 2009 Thanks, iPhoners! Dictionary.com Makes Apple’s List of 30 Favorite Apps
June 17, 2009 Harvesting the Best Answers from Ask.com’s AnswerFarms!
May 19, 2009 Thanks for Asking! Ask.com is a Webware 100 Award Winner Three Years Running
Basically why even have a blog if you are only going to use it to praise yourself? Also, if you are going to have Blog Roll why not remove sites that have not been active for over 2 and half years like - ThreadWatch?
I think it is pretty embarrassing and if Ask wants to be considered a player in the search space they need to be a bit less self promotional and more informational and helpful to the search community.Maybe just my opinion, but when was the last time you saw Ask.com really increase it's search market share?
Finally, Ask decides to name a new president. I guess if you current one is not doing a good job why not promote someone within the company who is successful? Why not, it only makes sense. So welcome to Doug Leeds who has been with Ask Networks since early 2006, where he has held several different positions. Most recently, he has been President of the company's Dictionary.com and Chief Operating officer of Ask Networks. Now as President, he will oversee the US business for Ask.com and lead the development, launch, and execution of Ask's strategy in the U.S.
That is about it, except in in effort to help Ask.com become a better more poweerful search engine I have decided to provide a grossly text rich backlink to their search engine:
