Search engine Lycos and its sites will be powered entirely by Ask.com.

The multi-year deal announced Wednesday means that both paid and unpaid search on Lycos.com, Hotbot.com, Tripod.com, and Angelfire.com will all carry the Ask.com logo and use its technology.

Under the agreement, Ask.com will provide web and image search, as well as targeted advertising links, for the Lycos sites. It will also provide Ask.com’s signature “zoom related search,” a conceptually-related suggestions form of search.

Though Lycos COO Brian Kalinowski declined to provide details of the partnership, he said Lycos will continue its existing partnerships with Microsoft and Google in some areas.

Lycos, whose sites had 25.7 million unique visitors in September, has had flat visitor growth over the past year, according to comScore Media Metrix.

The deal is just another feather in the cap of Ask.com parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp, whose CEO Barry Diller led it from laggard to leader in search since acquiring it for $1.85 billion in 2005 (see IAC Profit Rises).

“This partnership will broadly expose Ask’s differentiated feature set to Lycos’s millions of users and searchers each day,” wrote Andrew Moers, vice president for business development and syndication at Ask.com, in an email to Red Herring.

Ask networks are now the fourth most popular sites for search, according to comScore Media Metrix, a major turnaround for the Oakland, California company, formerly known as Ask Jeeves.

Lycos, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a subsidiary of the Korean Internet firm Daum Communications, having been acquired in 2004.

Pixsy Dust Showers Mamma

Video search engine Pixsy is powering a broadband video search engine to be launched next by Mamma.com, whose properties include its search engine and desktop tool Copernic.

The search technology will give users the ability to search for videos across the web, including YouTube, Revver, and many others.

San Francisco, California-based Pixsy made a splash by launching a celebrity web site, StarHabit, featuring a cartoon drawing of Tom Cruise with devil horns.

The company plans to license its video and image search technology to any site, blogger, or social networking member who wants it at no cost. In exchange, Pixsy will share in advertising revenues from the search results page, said Pixsy CEO Chase Norlin.

And Speaking of Celebrity Web Sites

The web’s snarkiest celebrity gossip blogger, Perez Hilton is giving a new search engine a whirl. The engine, powered by startup Searchles, gives fans the opportunity to search the PerezHilton site for historical gossip tidbits.

Its intelligent search is comparable to the new Google Co-Op. Searchles is using the same basic business model as Pixsy—providing the search engine technology for free in exchange for sharing of advertising revenue.

“We think where sites like Reddit and Digg go wrong is they don’t allow users to search through vertical search engines created by users,” said Searchles CTO Chris Seline. He said that since Mr. Hilton has a lot of “rabid users,” they should be able to search the site.

Searchles is an evolution of the search engine Dumbfind, developed by Mr. Seline.Both brands are wholly-owned by Dumbfind, Inc., a privately held company based in Washington, D.C. and backed by angel investors.

Contact the writer:SMugrabi@RedHerring.com

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