The fight to take on the might of Google’s search engine is hotting up.

Today Ask.com, one of the smaller but still significant search players, relaunches its service in the US with claims of faster, more relevant answers using new semantic technologies. The UK launch is later this month.

As Microsoft admitted this week, Google is so far ahead that competitors such as Yahoo!, Ask and Microsoft are battling simply to be No 2.

But even with small slices of the market, search is very big business. In the UK alone there are 3.9 billion searches conducted a month by 31 million internet users, according to comScore.

Ask.com, which came out of the Ask Jeeves brand, is returning to its core customers after toying with an appeal to more technology-savvy users.

Ask specialises in providing “smart answers” directly on the search ranking page to customers who think of the engine as a way of answering a particular question.

The search engine is to appeal to its mostly female, middle-American, middle-Britain roots with improved searches in health, nutrition, education, reference and entertainment.

Cesar Mascaraque, the company’s European managing director, said the UK search market was worth $3 billion and a small gain in market share meant a big return for the bottom line.

“We are not trying to launch all things to all people. We want to look beyond a one-size-fits-all solution to search,” he told The Times.

Ask’s UK marketing campaign will launch in the Midlands from October 22.

The niche approach sees Ask producing, among other innovations, the “world’s biggest cookbook” with a database of 3 million recipes. Type in a dish name (blueberry muffins) or even just some ingredients and a suggested recipe will be provided.

Ask is part of IAC, an internet group of companies spun off by billionainaire Barry Diller from his conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp in August.

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