Yesterday Ask.com rolled out the 11th version of its search engine, which it claims is 30 percent faster than the previous version.

The search engine now indexes content from a broader pool of sites, draws more material from those it indexes and ultimately aims to answer questions in the search results, CEO Jim Safka told the Associated Press. 

Ask Q&A, a new service, trawls for similar questions asked by users and shows how others responded. This is how the company plans to display answers in search results, as opposed to merely sending people to links. The service is powered by Akamai Technologies.

Despite promises of a spiffy new algorithm, a query on Ask.com for "ask.com new look" did not produce any information on the site's recent remake. All "relevant" articles were dated pre-2008.

One first-page result was an article about Ask.com's "New Look" — introduced in June '07. Called Ask3D, the design leapt away from the traditional list and displayed search results in three vertical panels.

It wasn't a flop per se, but few early adopters came back, Ask admitted later that year.

This year's redesign is a compromise of 2007's, with two columns instead of three. (The right-hand column reflects "Related Searches.")

In March, Ask decided to target married women. Search results focus on delivering information on health, entertainment, children, recipes and hobbies, ceding more general topics to large engines like Google.

Ask.com's overall search share in August improved 0.3 percentage points from July to 4.8 percent, widening its lead over fifth-ranked AOL, according to comScore. Microsoft and Yahoo lost search share, down 0.6 and 0.9 percentage points, respectively. Google is still top dog, with 63 percent of the search market. (See pie charts on MarketingCharts.)

Hitwise data paints a different picture, showing Ask's search share to be around 3.5% in July and August.

But Ask doesn't need double-digit market share to do well financially, said IAC chairman and CEO Barry Diller. The overall online ad market is still young and continuing to grow, leaving plenty of revenue for niche search engines.