The keynote speaker this morning at the Search Engine Strategies Conference was Jim Lanzone from Ask.com.

Ask.com recently launched a new look for a search engine. Going against what Lanzone called “10 blue links” that have historically represented search, Ask.com is offering a more contextual search results page. The new Ask3D interface page offers several contextual components of a search neatly organized by category including suggestions for related searches, blog results, image results, map results, time and weather and wikipedia.

For example, search for presidential candidate Mitt Romney and you get these results on Ask.com.  Compare the information on this page to a search for a similar search on Yahoo and Google.

Lanzone said that Ask wants to more than just provide a list of search results but will provide “the right information at the right place at the right time.” He noted that the Ask strategy is to focus on the user and how they look for information. According to Lanzone, merely providing data will not be enough to win in the next generation of search.

The Ask CEO said that Ask is a combination of art and science and that Ask pays attention to the form factors.  He considers that Ask.com is where the right brain meets left brain.

Like last year when Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google was the keynote speaker, the issue of privacy was paramount. Lanzone addressed it as well and discussed the “Ask Eraser,” a tool that he says “takes the issue off the table.” The Ask Eraser will allow a user to erase all personalized search data. Personalization will be on an opt-in basis only.

The Ask.com transformation is quite remarkable from where it stood after the 2000 dot-bomb when it was called Ask Jeeves. At that time, share of Ask Jeeves were selling at $0.79 which gave the company a $30 million value – less than the cash on its balance sheet. The Company the narrowed it focus and made a leap in magnitude when it acquired a small company with robust search technology called Teoma in 2001. Faswt forward to 2005 when it was acquired for $2.5 billion by Barry Diller’s  IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI).

I am sure Lanzone tires of the constant market share questions about search and the 7-ton gorilla called Google. He mentioned that following its recent re-design, the press said Ask.com was trying to topple Google.  He denied that as the ask.com strategy and said market share was not important to him. He mentioned that he was not focused on competition. Rather, Ask.com’s motivation is to meet the needs of its customers. Lanzone said that if they meet the needs of their customers, with billion of searches, market share will take are of itself. I’d like to be there when he says that to Barry Diller’s face.