You can probably hear me sighing all the way through the intraweb. Not even a full week after I posted about Ask's fantastic new Ask3D search interface, they go and do something stupid again. So let me start by saying "Ask, I want to like you...I REALLY want to like you...but then you go and make a commercial that basically says you're the search engine of choice for creepy guys with a fetish for Xena and it makes me say 'ick.'"

I've written in the past about Ask's incredible ability to follow up every brilliant move with something that makes them look like absolute bone-heads.

It's a frustrating journey to watch as it seems that every time they do something great, they follow up with something that makes me cringe. Earlier this year they scored humor points with a Google pen joke, but their follow-up went too far. Earlier this year they stormed the gates of local search with the very impressive Ask City product. Then they followed that up with the cringe worthy "information revolution" viral flop.

Curious what I'm ranting about because you haven't seen the new Ask ad?

I mean sure...if you want to alienate women and attract the small (who am I kidding...large) demographic of men that find scantily clad women with swords to be a reason to use your search engine, then go for it! But if you'd like to attract women to your engine (and I'd argue that women would likely be high adopters for this type of interface) then find an ad agency that has more pages in their playbook than the one that says "sex sells."

It's uncanny really. Maybe in the world of search, we should start calling the ups and downs the "Ask effect."

(Hat tip to Lisa as I hadn't seen the ad yet.)