The new LookSmart PPC program

(April 10 2002, updated April 11 and 23) LookSmart has now finished the transition from being a pay for inclusion to becoming a pay per click directory.

Commercial sites will have to pay US$ 49 to be registered and another 15 cents per click-through. There is a minimum deposit of US$ 150.

LookSmart has already started selling pay per click results to Yahoo! Australia and New Zealand of all places! Yahoo! is -- or rather used to be -- one of LookSmart's hardest competitor in the search directory field. This getting to confusing even for our taste.

You can only submit one URL per domain or website via the so-called "Small Business Listing service". The only exception is community Web sites that host more than one independent business. If you want to list more than one domain or URL, you must enter the Looklistings program for medium to large companies, which is more expensive.

Non-commercial listings submitted to the volunteer based Zeal directory remain free. These are also included in the LookSmart directory.

The PPC price is fixed regardless of search term or category, and there are no auction bids for the top listings as in Overture. Instead your ranking is based on relevance. Exactly how the search engine algorithm determines relevancy is not known. It will, however, be connected to the keywords present in your site's title and description as this is given in the directory. The text on the actual webpage is not taken into consideration.

You write the description

In the new system you write your title and description, you select relevancy keywords and you pick a relevant directory category. Hence a thorough knowledge of keyword optimization will come in handy.

However, the LookSmart editors may change your description and keywords if they do not comply with with the LookSmart Listing Guidelines. In LookSmart's own words:

"Our editorial team will validate the accuracy of your suggested listing to ensure that we provide users with the most relevant search results. While we will make every effort to use the recommendations that you provide, LookSmart's team of professional editors will be responsible for the exact wording or your site description."

What LookSmart fear, of course, is to be accused of being a business directory only. The only way of distinguishing these pay per click listings from regular text ads, is by letting them undergo editorial control. That doesn't stop them from being advertising, in our opinion.

Once your listing has been added to the directory, you have 30 days to request modifications to your title, description and category at no charge. If your site is not accepted, you loose the Listings Set-up Fee. However, you have the option to resubmit a different URL in its place

Featured listings

Small Business Listings are also eligible to appear in the "Featured Listings" tier of search results when they are relevant and when space is available.

Featured Listings appear before the Directory Categories and Reviewed Web Sites sections on the LookSmart site and on LookSmart-hosted search and directory partners Juno, Qwest, and Time Warner. Featured Listings are also distributed and included among the search results of meta-search engines like Dogpile, MetaCrawler, Go2Net, Mamma.com, MegaSpider, Search Addict, Search123, and Ask Jeeves.

Is it worth it? Probably not. If you are good at writing titles and descriptions that include popular keyword phrases that fits your theme, it may probably be worth the expenses. Such descriptions may bring you targeted and relevant traffic.

The point is of course whether you can afford to pay 15 cents per click. That depends on the conversion rate, i.e. the number of visitors that actually buy your goods or use your services. If you do go for this program, be very careful and test the results thoroughly!

The role of MSN

The biggest plus of the LookSmart directory is that it is used by MSN.com, one of the largest search portals in the world. The traffic from the LookSmart sites themselves are not important.

The question is, of course, whether will continue to use LookSmart results now that the directory has turned into a pay per click machine. The deal LookSmart has done with Yahoo! Australia proves that the new LookSmart in many ways operate as any other pay per click search engine.

MSN already includes paid listings from Overture on their site, and it is hard to defend the inclusion of more non-marked results of this type. LookSmart staff has been reported to say that they cannot guarantee MSN inclusion in the future.

Moreover, if your are willing to pay for a top listing on MSN, you must compare LookSmart's 15 cents per click, with the current price at Overture. For highly specialized search terms Overture may even be cheaper, and your PPC result will be listed before the LookSmart entries.

Automatic upgrading of old accounts

The new LookSmart PPC system has not been well received in the webmaster community, partly because of the policy of "upgrading" existing sites to the new system.

These are sites that have already paid the one time 299 dollars fee of the old paid inclusion program, and many webmasters feel that it is unfair that they now must pay for the click-throughs as well (although they do get a fair number of "free" clicks).

The only fair thing to do would be for LookSmart to leave the existing listings as they are. That is what the site owners have paid for.

If you have a old type directory listing in LookSmart, leave it alone! Do not activate your new Small Business Listings account. Whether LookSmart will delete your site or not, depends on how important it is for the directory's relevance. You may get away with paying nothing at all. The alternative is paying a lot of money!

For the text of the LookSmart customer information emails, see Free Search Engine Discussion Forums.
LOOKs can be deceiving,very informative article by Kalena Jordan at Search Engine Guide.
LookSmart LookListings FAQ
LookListings Small Business Program

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