A recent partnership with Lycos to provide its search capabilities, in the process ousting rivals Microsoft and Google, is the latest move that has Ask.com gaining momentum against competitors.

Google and Yahoo are still the giants of online search, but ComScore now ranks Ask.com as the fourth-largest search engine, just ahead of AOL, CNET reports. Ask.com has 5.8 percent market share, while Google and Yahoo are the clear leaders with 45.1 and 28.1 percent, respectively. Nielsen/NetRatings also found that Ask.com trailed only Google in year-over-year growth for Sept. - with 19 percent growth versus Google's 24 percent.

Analysts credit much of Ask.com's growth to an improved user experience. And a big part of that improvement has come from not only integrating content from other InterActiveCorp properties, such as LendingTree.com, Match.com, Ticketmaster and Gifts.com, but also in lowering the number of ads.

"We have fewer ads and the strategy has worked," IAC President Doug Lebda explains. "While it reduced monetization in the short term, over time - because consumers come back more often - that has made up for it. We have happier consumers, more frequent users and more loyalty."