A WebmasterWorld thread reports Ask.com's crawler has seemed to slow down to a halt. Some webmasters are reporting zero crawling activity from Ask.com, while others are reporting extremely limited crawling activity.
WebmasterWorld moderator, jdMorgan, noticed the slow down to, he said:
I have noticed that they have dramatically slowed down their crawling on my sites, but they have not stopped.
Yes, this fuels me more on my write up named Sorry, Ask.com -- I Still Don't Think You're Focused On Core Search at Search Engine Land. Yea, Ask - is this a sign that you are giving up on the unstructured web? Let's just hope it is a temporary slow down that people are noticing. Honestly it would not surprise me if you guys gave up on crawling the unstructured web.
Also make sure to read my write up here named Search Community Reaction to Ask.com New Search Strategy.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
