Since Microsoft and Yahoo reached a search agreement, Ask has, by default, moved up from the #4 search engine to the #3 search engine. Beyond that, according to Bruce Clay during SES San Jose, Ask is finally getting around to releasing some APIs. This is a huge boon to the SEO world (and long overdue). It's been a while since Ask was considered much of a factor in the SEO world, this could be a nice step in the right direction for them.
