According to the MSN Virtual Earth Blog, Ask.com has thrown out its mapping platform for Ask Maps and is now using Microsoft Virtual Earth as its new platform.

Ask.com is using Microsoft Virtual Earth for Ask Maps, Ask City (search for Businesses, Events and Movies per US City) and their Web Search including the Bird’s Eye view. The new integration is as of now visible in the United States only. However, speculations are that other countries such as Japan, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK that are still running the Ask Maps in the Beta phase will be reverting to the new platform very soon.

According to Webmaster World, the google.co.uk domain is undergoing SERP changes, that is a part of the ‘July 2008 Google.co.uk SERP Changes’. Due to this, the Webmasters are experiencing severe ranking fluctuations for their websites in this domain.

Here are some of the interesting posts from the Webmaster World thread:

“I decided to perform an experiment last weekend and constructed a brand new 35 page promotional brochure site on a 14 year old .co.uk. This .co.uk has been pointing at our .com for a couple of years now and both have been hosted in the U.K. from inception.