Ask.com tries to sneak in an Ask toolbar by adding a topframe to search engine results — again. That is bad idea.

You can say what you want about the search engine Ask.com. At the same time as Google is struggling with downtime and complaining customers, Ask thinks they can win new customers by adding — wait for it! — frames to search engine results!

Yes, it is true that we have already written about this. However, after the previous frame attempt of February this year, Ask gave up on the experiment and returned to regular non-frame search engine result pages.

Top frame with Ask search field

The new frameset divides your browser window in two: At the top there is a frame with a Ask search field containing your query and links to related results (definition, videos). Under is the page you have decided to visit by clicking on one of the relevant links on the Ask.com result page.

Click on image for large size version.

Ask has clearly taken some of the many complaints into consideration. There are two links in the top frame that helps you close the upper frame: One link with the URL to the web page included in the bottom frame, and one Close button.

In addition there is a Close Permanently link for those of us that really can’t stand the thought of having pages framed in another site’s frameset.

Why frames is such a bad idea

So it is all right then?

Unfortunately, no. With a few exceptions the frame standard has been a fiasco, partly because regular users find them confusing (is this a part of the web page or not?) and partly because the URL for the framed pages are hidden. This means that if you bookmark the page, you actually bookmark the ask.com frameset and not the page itself.

Interestingly enough, the search engines themselves find it difficult to navigate framesets, and if they do manage to index the contect the listing in search engine results will be the frameset and not the framed pages. Most webmasters are therefore wise enough to avoid them.

Why is Ask doing this?

The most obvious reason for doing this is that Ask keeps you on their site for a longer time.

Let’s say you have search for a “internet search tutorial” and you end up at this site. You click on the relevant link on our front page. You then click on yet another link. The Ask.com topframe remains in place all along. When you have finished reading Pandia’s search tutorial, you enter a new search query in the top frame and gets a new result page from Ask (with ads, of course).

Some searchers may indeed find this useful, but they are the kind of searchers that know so little about web searching that they miss the fact that their web browser has its own search field, or that they can install a toolbar to add an Ask search field. These are exactly the kind of searchers the top frame will confuse.

Ask loses out in the toolbar/browser race

Ask’s big problem is that they need to hold to searchers that get their way. Google is now the default search engine of all browsers except the Explorer, i.e. both Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome have dedicated search fields that searches Google by default.

Savvy users know that you may add Ask to these search fields (or it may even be part of a pull down menu), but that is one step too many for most, which leads to a lock benefiting Google and Live Search.

Ask.com needs to break out of that lock in, and this is probably one such attempt.

However, it is the wrong one.

What can Ask do?

The right one?

Well, if we are to learn from the history of Google, what is needed are better search results. Google dethroned the mighty AltaVista by delivering a better search technology. The question is whether Ask has the clout needed to do that.

Ask has previously showed a good grasp of search interface innovation, however. Some of Google’s recent improvements were implemented by Ask a long time ago. Maybe Ask just should get better at being Ask.

The recent redesing of the UK version of Ask, now rebranded as Ask Jeeves, is a step in the right direction. And that site does not frame search results! Yeah, that is the solution. We are moving over to Ask Jeeves.