In January, Ask.com gained some market share, ending six straight months of falling share, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR). Who gets the credit? Nascar, according to Ask.com’s new president Scott Garell. Since the start of the year the company has shifted almost all of its marketing efforts to the racing association, spending about $10 million to sponsor the group, a racing team, and also buy ads on racing programming, according to Sports Business Journal. “We’ve seen very strong results,” Garell tells the publication. “It shows the activation is working.” Why did Ask decide to focus on Nascar? Its “famously loyal fans” he says. “We were looking to appeal to audiences, not so much on a product level, but on a fan experience level.” (Moving forward, it’s unclear how big cutbacks at some racing teams due to the loss of sponsorship money could impact that).

The advertising strategy appears to be a switch for Ask, which previously had broad, expansive campaigns—and poor results. For instance, it spent as much as $100 million on advertising in 2007, but its market share dropped from 5.2 percent to 4.3 percent. Of course, its gains this time around are still small. Its brand awareness among Nascar fans is up 43 percent, according to a study Ask commissioned (That’s significant considering that 75 million Americans identify themselves as Nascar fans). But Ask only increased its share to 3.9 percent of the search market in May, from 3.7 percent in January, according to comScore. It’s also completely unclear whether the gains can hold. The company still hasn’t decided whether to renew the deal next year (although it says it has “every intention of being back.”) And then there’s Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), which has just begun filling the airwaves with ads for its own revamped search engine, Bing.

• Jim Safka Steps Down As Ask’s CEO
• Ask.com Searches For Some Attention