IAC/InterActiveCorp said Wednesday it swung to a third-quarter loss because of expenses from the former Internet conglomerate's August split into five publicly traded companies.

IAC — which is headed by billionaire Barry Diller and now consists of Internet properties including search engine Ask.com — reported a loss of $14.8 million, or 11 cents per share, in the period ended Sept. 30. In the comparable period last year it earned $70.5 million, 47 cents per share.

Without one-time events, and the spinoff expenses that totaled 39 cents per share, IAC would have earned 25 cents per share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a profit of 16 cents per share.

Revenue rose 10 percent to $369.3 million, better than the $355.4 million expected by analysts, and IAC shares rose 54 cents, or 3.3 percent, to close at $17.14.

IAC said its media and advertising revenue grew 2 percent to $193.3 million, helped by an overall rise in searches at Ask.com — a new version of which it launched after the quarter ended — and the inclusion of Dictionary.com, which IAC acquired in July.

The company noted, however, that while Ask.com queries rose overall, they declined in the U.S. IAC attributed this to lower spending on marketing during the quarter.

Jim Friedland, an analyst with Cowen & Co., sees maintaining Ask's share of the online search market — while market leader Google continues to grow — as IAC's biggest long-term challenge.

"The bottom line is if Google can offer better map features, better search results and related features like Gmail, over time it's just likely that Ask becomes less relevant for the users," he said.

However, Ask does benefit from Google's success, since Google posts ads on Ask and other IAC sites.

Revenue from IAC's Match unit, which includes dating sites Match.com and Chemistry.com, climbed 5 percent to $93.5 million. Revenue from the company's emerging businesses unit — which includes The Daily Beast, a news-aggregating site with editorial content — grew 37 percent to nearly $50 million.

IAC's ServiceMagic unit, which runs Web sites that match homeowners with home-improvement contractors, reported revenue grew 37 percent to $34 million.

But IAC's overall results were hampered by expenses related to its August split and a charge for buying some debt from spun-off company Interval Leisure Group Inc.

IAC does not issue guidance. But in a conference call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Tom McInerney noted that IAC has noticed weakness in its search business in the last 30 to 60 days. He said it is "very hard right now to pin down the magnitude of it, what it means going forward."

Diller said the broader transition from traditional media advertising to online ads can't be stopped. Still, he acknowledged that economic issues and what will happen to the ad market over the next year or so "are just unknown really at this moment."