Ask Jeeves, About.com Ink Distribution Pact

Ask Jeeves and
About.com, a leading network of niche
vertical sites, Friday forged a content distribution agreement.

The deal calls for Ask Jeeves (ASKJ)
to appear on all of About.com’s (BOUT))
search results pages. Also, Ask Jeeves will provide About.com users with
another resource to find answers to their questions.

In turn, About.com will have placement on all Ask Jeeves question response
pages. Ask Jeeves users will now receive access to new content by linking
directly into relevant articles in About.com’s network of topic-specific
sites.

“By adding About.com as a metasearch partner we are bolstering the Web
resources that consumers can tap into for answers at Ask.com,” said Ted Briscoe, senior vice president
and general manager of Ask Jeeves’ Consumer Question Answering Service.

“Additionally, the exposure we
will get on About.com will allow us to introduce the ease and relevance of Ask.com to millions of new
users.”

Ask Jeeves provides question answering services for clients and companies
on the Web by allowing users to ask questions in plain English and be
directed to Web sites containing the answer.

In November, Ask Jeeves grabbed Net Effect Systems for about $319 million
in stock, adding a live-help Web-searching service to link clients to live
experts who can answer questions by e-mail or telephone. Ask Jeeves
eventually hopes to expand internationally in the hopes of trying to pull
neck and neck with other search engines, such as Yahoo! (YHOO)
in the query answering department.

About.com is the leading network of niche vertical sites for users and
marketers. The network includes over
650 highly targeted environments, each overseen by a professional guide.
This week, About.com bought business technology provider North Sky to offer Web hosting and site
development for businesses. About.com, which hopes to offer free e-mail,
Web pages and instant messaging with the deal, sold 500,000 unregistered
shares, worth approximately $29 million, to acquire the company.