Killing Jeeves might have been one of the most understated viral marketing efforts in quite some time. The SEM community is not known for giving in to viral marketing efforts and sending links, press, and traffic towards these efforts. However, Ask managed to pull it off for several consecutive months.

By announcing the death of an icon months in advance of the actual undertaking, Ask garnered more press from both the SEM community and from main stream media than it had in the previous year (or more). Their query share did not change significantly, however, there community awareness did.

The culmination of this effort was a video and final farewell party at SES in New York. The party centered around a Star Wars Han Solo encased in carbonite theme (pictures on the Ask Blog here).

Ask has a smart marketing department, and the entire death and new releases seemed to be well planned as they didn’t stop at the death of Jeeves. Shortly after his death, Ask has tried to capitalize on the heightened awareness of their product by introducing:

• Maps
• Encyclopedia
• Kids
• Desktop
• Ask Netherlands
• Ask France
• Ask Italy

His death was only a few weeks ago - that’s quite a plethora of offerings in a short time span. While Ask might currently have a small query share, they are the player to watch this year. In order for Ask to really capitalize on their new branding, the time todo so is right now.

If you’re going to watch someone attempt to grab query share from Google this year, it’s going to be Ask vs MSN. Google will maintain the lead, Yahoo will continue to ride in second place with a respectable number, but the dog fight is going to be Ask and MSN fighting for every additional query and user they can recruit to their properties.

It should be a fun few months to watch these two maneuver around the web and the additional offerings they bring to users in their recruiting efforts.

Goodbye to Jeeves - The Final Video:

• Backing Up Microsoft Outlook
• John Battelle speaking at Sig Search
• links for 2008-05-16
• Ask Jeeves Party Photos
• Orkut Adds Video Sharing