Relieved from the pressures of running a public company, the head of recently acquired Ask Jeeves said Tuesday the search outfit plans to expand its global reach and that changing the search engine’s name, tied to its logo of a smiling butler in a black suit, will be part of the process.

Barry Diller’s online empire IAC/Interactive bought Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion in March, giving the firm more resources to boost the company’s brand, scale, and presence, said Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz.

Speaking at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, California, Mr. Berkowitz also said he was sure the Oakland, California-based company would concentrate on core search instead of other Internet opportunities.

Though he said a name change for its biggest brand, No. 5 search engine Ask Jeeves, was in the works, he didn’t provide any details.

Ask Jeeves recently announced a paid listings product and Mr. Berkowitz promised many more such products in the future. The focus, he said, would be on structured data and on Ask Jeeves’ response page. The page would carry more than just links, as Ask Jeeves integrates content with other IAC sites.

Mr. Berkowitz also suggested that Ask Jeeves would work to draw more advertisers through personalization, a trend that’s been led by search engines like Yahoo and Google.

“You’ll see us build My Jeeves further [as we figure out] how to get closer to consumers,” he said.

Growing Search Industry

Mr. Diller, a fan of search for years, is possibly Ask Jeeves’ biggest evangelist. And given the entertainment mogul’s aggressive track record, he probably won’t stop pumping resources into the search engine until it gains enough market share to be considered a serious competitor to Google and Yahoo. Right now, it has 6 percent of the market, while Google has almost 37 percent.

An entire industry has sprung up around search over the past few years, largely due to the success of Google and Yahoo. Organizers said they expected the conference to draw up to 6,000 attendees.

“You know the field is hot when you see the M.B.A. crowd show up,” said Chris Tolles, vice president of marketing at Topix.net. “A few years ago, these conferences would be in a small hotel with a few people. Now they’ve taken over the entire convention center.”

It isn’t just the search companies that are thriving. Web publishers, which use search as a way to draw traffic and earn revenue from search engines, are upbeat on the industry. So are search optimization companies, which help sites improve their rankings on search engines. Also positive are the advertisers and vendors that drive the industry.

Indeed, the search bunch is not a group that’s on the fringes anymore. Search Engine Marketing Professionals Association estimated that search engine marketing was a $4-billion industry last year. And even big brand names want to gain from search.

“About.com’s whole strategy uses search engine optimization,” said Scott Meyer, CEO of New York City-based About.com, which was acquired by The New York Times earlier this year for $410 million. “It’s a key piece of our strategy and helps us do what we want to do, and that’s to provide our readers with practical information.”

Many of the attendees at the conference were also on a quest to learn how to make money using search.

“I’m here to be re-inspired about search engine optimization,” said MichaelDammann, CTO of sitetutor.com, a San Diego, California-based firm that focuses on building web sites that can capitalize on search engine marketing. Search engine optimization refers to practices that can boost a site’s rating on a search site.

“Right now, everyone wants to do it, and everyone has their own theories about how to do it,” he said. “But the way to do it is to look at the search engines, and look at the direction they’re going in.”