Ask.com’s Newest Offer: Discount Search

Barry Diller has tried just about every gambit possible to boost his Ask.com search engine, but he keeps coming up with more. The latest: Coupons.

IAC (IACI) has rolled out Ask.Deals, a dedicated section for bargain hunters and coupon clippers. The site has its own tab on the search engine, but Ask is also featuring it prominently in regular search results: Plug in “cheap ipods,” for example, and you’ll have to work very hard not to end up in the new section.

Can’t hurt. Can it help? Ask has been mired at just under four percent of the U.S. search market for a long time and it seems unlikely that rejiggering its search results will attract new users in significant numbers. It is possible that Ask can boost click-through rates, and thus dollars, though, which would be nice.

Then again, Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) are trying variants on the same idea. And perhaps more tellingly, Google (GOOG) isn’t doing much with this stuff at all.