Looksmart - New Order Form

[ihelpyou]

Check it out:

http://listings.looksmart.com/submit/;jsessionid=5VKNFYSBCKEANLAQQBOE2LFMCCAF0TRF?url=

They now ask you for 3 important keyword phrases along with the description. Very good deal!

[ihelpyou]

All new in Looksmart now. You can go to your control panel and keep track of your orders in it.

[MsSearch]

It's definitely an improvement for SEO's who submit numerous client sites.

(they added the 3 keyword deal 'cause we uncovered the way they review sites...assigning keywords to each listing ;) )

[ihelpyou]

(they added the 3 keyword deal 'cause we uncovered the way they review sites...assigning keywords to each listing )
That is exactly what I thought MS as soon as I saw it. It is soooo funny that other fora never have mentioned it or hardly at all and we have said this all along. :)

[ihelpyou]

Once the site is optimized a little, I will submit it to Looksmart for you.
That is a statement I made back on 6-12 right after these forums opened. This is the reason I always optimize the site first before submitting to Looksmart. Always have.

There are numerous threads after that one where I and we discuss this. Here is that first thread:

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49&highlight=keywords

[ihelpyou]

As you know, I am not a PPC fan at all. The Looksmart "promote" a site thing is something I am very curious about. It is something that I am going to try for $29.95 a month. Who knows, it may be something to recommend to clients as it is very inexpensive. It is not PPC per say as you pay a simple monthly set fee. The url you promote has to already be in the Looksmart directory.

I will post my findings in here when I have evaluated this.

Here is the Url for info about it:
http://listings.looksmart.com/promote/

[ihelpyou]

Dear Doug Heil,
Thank you for using LookSmart Site Promote!

The Site Promote service will take effect within 48 hours of your order. Your site will be promoted in search each month until you stop your promotion, and a charge from "LookSmart Site Submit" will appear on your credit card statement each month that your site is promoted.

Site Promote listings are eligible to appear in the top tier of search results on www.looksmart.com and on LookSmart-hosted search and directory partners, such as Juno, Qwest, and Time Warner. Site Promote listings are also eligible to be included in the search results on LookSmart meta-search partners, such as Dogpile, MetaCrawler, Go2Net, Mamma.com, MegaSpider, Search Addict, Search123, and Ask Jeeves.

Your site will appear in Featured Listings area when relevant to a user's search. LookSmart makes no guaranteed regarding how frequently or for what keywords your site will appear.

To discontinue your site's promotion, go to Site Promote Orders and click the Deactivate button net to your listing.

If you have any questions about your order, please contact our customer service department at expsvc@looksmart.net.

We recommend that you print and save this confirmation for your records. You will need this information for any future contact with LookSmart editors or customer service members. Your card has been charged for the order below:

[Blue]

Curious....Site Promote listings are eligible to appear in the top tier of search results on.... I wonder what, exactly, they mean by eligible?

[ihelpyou]

Here is the Faq on the services offered:
http://listings.looksmart.com/info/faq.jhtml

Probably because only 4 listings appear in the "featured" at the top of results, so if there are more sites than 4 that want a certain keyword phrase, they rotate them or something. See, this is not PPC, it is a set monthly fee.

[markymark]

Doesn't sound that good a deal to me. They don't guarantee how often you will appear, they don't even guarantee that you will appear, they don't even guarantee that you will be included in their partners sites. They also don't guarantee what keywords you will appear for.

For $30 a month, you could build up a pretty reasonable PPC campaign and guarantee to appear in all of those search engines and be in control of the keywords you appear under.

I see PPC as a better bet than this, personally.

[ihelpyou]

Well, this is why I had to try it. One never knows for sure unless they try. I did give them 10 keyword phrases to be found under so hopefully those are the only 10. For 30 bucks, it's worth a try. I can always cancel at the end of the month.

I will never do PPC, especially PPC that is third party. This is LS's own thing which is a big difference to me. I think of Overture as a middleman or liason between the real search engine/directory and the advertiser. I hate middlemen and only want to deal directly. With LS, I am dealing directly.

[Advisor]

Hmmm...interesting. But how many people actually visit all these "partner" sites that LookSmart talks about? Doesn't look like MSN is included on the list. Now if that were there, it might be a good deal.

Let us know how your traffic goes with this, Doug. It will be interesting to know.

Jill

[dvduval]

I also like the sound of this deal. I just signed up for it. I have tried paying for a number of different things. Below I will list them in order from favorite to least favorite.

1. Yahoo listing-has brought the most traffic. Now that Overture has stepped in, I'm waiting to see if much changes.
2. Position Tech-first I only listed 3 pages. Then for $120 more dollars, I listed 8 more and I got twice as many Inktomi hits per day.
3. Looksmart-if they wanted to look smarter, they would actually show you the hits like position tech. I added an extra category, but it didn't seem to help. As a matter of fact, when I just now paid for the new service, it didn't even show my new topic! (even though it listed my old ones) Any suggestions? They have some pretty important partners, so I expect the money was spent well.
4. Overture-their system is built to encourage bidding wars. I do better financially avoiding the really competitive phrases. Since the results are at the top of AOL, sometimes it's worth paying big bucks if the conversion rate is good. If only I knew!
5. Find What- top of Excite, not expensive, why not?
6. Google Adwords-I stopped because it seemed that I was paying more for impressions than clicks.
7. Ah ha-they used to put a nice "logolink" for the phrase "dance shoes", but then they changed so that I would have needed to bid on "shoes" in order to list for "dance shoes". I stepped out at that point.

Anybody think I've missed an important paid service?

Back to the topic at hand:
It's too bad Looksmart doesn't give you an in depth report on exactly how your promoted keyword featured listing will be displayed on the "more than 300 Looksmart partners". I'm sure it is for competitive reasons (but that's the same reason I'm paying Looksmart!).

[dvduval]

Questions to consider...probably too early to answer.

Now that Looksmart is asking for three keywords, what should I do about my current listings? Can I find out if they have keywords? And if so, what are they? Will the promote service for $30/month take care of that?

[ihelpyou]

When you first submitted your site to LS is when they added your keywords. You cannot change what keywords your site was given back then. This is why they started asking for 3 keywords.

If you chose the 29.95 a month one, you gave them 10 keyword phrases so hopefully you will be found under those.

[MsSearch]

For those of you who signed up for the 'Promote A Site' at Looksmart, please do keep us posted about this new plan.

[ihelpyou]

sheesh,... I just signed up last nite and it is already showing up. Thanks Looksmart for putting me at the very top! :)

http://www.looksmart.com/r_search?look=&key=search+engine+optimization




Okay... quick check reveals that out of the ten phrases I used, I am in the "featured" section on 9 of them. Not bad at all as the tenth term was a little iffy. :) The majority of terms I am number one with the rest #2 and #3.

BTW, Dogpile is already showing the results also.

[dvduval]

-Thanks Ihelpyou

I am also listed for all the keywords I submitted last night in Looksmart and Dogpile and at the bottom of Ask Jeeves.
MSN hasn't budged though.

Can't seem to find a forum for AOL:
Does anyone know why some listings have "show me more like this" and some don't (because mine doesn't).

[MsSearch]

Hi DvDuval--

on AOL, the 'show me more like this' takes you to the AOL directory page (reflects ODP data). So if you're site/page is not in DMOZ/ODP then you won't have that link next to your listing.

Is your listing in AOL not in ODP? Does your listing come from an inktomi submission? This could be why your site does not display the 'show me more like this' link...

[Advisor]

MSN hasn't budged though. MSN isn't included in the bargain, is it?

Jill

[MsSearch]

After reading about Site Promote and other info on Looksmarts Looklistings that these sites are, for the most part, displayed on their meta-search partners.

MSN pulls their featured listings from a variety of sources:

--The Internet's top sites for news in entertainment, sports, business, and politics
--The most popular musical artist sites for biographies and song samples
--The most popular movie sites for images and movie trailers
--MSN Encarta for information you might search for in an encyclopedia
--Internet Keywords for direct navigation
--MSN content
--MSN content partners
--MSN advertising partners (Microsoft accepts payment for listings from advertising partners)

[dvduval]

Dear MsSearch,

My site is listed in ODP.

Shall I call AOL and demand answers? (haha)

Sorry to talk about AOL in this forum. Is there a better place?

[Advisor]

The thing I read on MSN mentions "content partners" but does not specifically say LookSmart. It looks like a lot of their Featured results may be from Real Names.

I think the bottom line here is if you're joining LookSmart's new program because you think it will get your site featured in the featured site area of MSN you may be disappointed.

Doug, if you do see that you get there, let us know!

Jill

[MsSearch]

DvDuval--that listing in AOL when i use the term dance shoes...is your inktomi listing...not your ODP listing

Goto results 11-25 on AOL for the term dance shoes....your ODP listing is #20

[ihelpyou]

Oh no, this 30 buck a month deal does NOT include MSN,.. that's a fact. If it did, they could get much more than 30.

[Advisor]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
Oh no, this 30 buck a month deal does NOT include MSN,.. that's a fact. If it did, they could get much more than 30. Yeah, that's what I figured. Which definitely makes me wonder about it's worth. Granted it's only $30 a month, but that's $30 that may not get you much if no one is searching at those places that you're paying for. Do you actually no anyone that searches in looksmart itself? (Besides SEO's checking positions.)

Jill

[ihelpyou]

I have always received a couple a day from Looksmart, but not many.

Today it has gone up. Other referrals today from partners include RoadRunner, findarticles.com, Dogpile, mamma, and a couple more.

I will say that if they keep the referrals coming daily and do not stop them because of any kind of a limit, this will be more than worth it.

[Advisor]

Referrals are one thing, but are you making sales? I've always found that 99% of the people searching and clicking on "search engine optimization" are simply other companies checking out the competition. Are you getting real leads from this?

J

[ihelpyou]

It's not nearly enough time or referrals to judge how it's doing. Over a one week's time period will be good to judge.

BTW, your statement use to be true for me, but the last few months have seen many actual people wanting the service who typed in .. search engine optimization.

[Mel]

Verrrry Interesting how the LS featured listings interact with MSN.

I note that Dougs pay for placement listing with LS is #2 on the page for SEO, but a similiar search at MSN does not produce ANY featured listings and Dougs first mention is at #34, despite the LS high rank.

In addition out of the first 50 positions for (Search engine optimization) only Doug and Jimtools are names that I recognize and most of the really well known names are totally missing from the first 100 SERPs. Jill did get two rankings (one for highrankings and one for rankwrite) in the early 90s ( I was lucky enough to get a ranking just below her) but names like BruceClay, Searchenginewatch, Spiderfood, etc etc are not to be found in the top 100.

How 'bout it Doug are you getting any traffic from the LS featured listing?

[Farhan]

Can sites submitted through Zeal, which are non commercial in nature, be promoted through looklistings featured sites? as they are listed in the looksmart directory also.

[Advisor]

Yes, I believe so. I just added Rank Write to my list of LookSmart sites, and it added in fine. I have no intention of promoting it, but it appears as if I could if I wanted to pay for it.

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Oh, I am sure that if you pay, it would be promoted.

Mel... still early but I have since heard that a cutoff of 200 clicks per month is in place. Not sure about that as I did not see this on the site when I ordered. If that is the case, that equates to .15 per click on the $25, which to me is not worth it at all. Also, if the case, this is pure PPC of which I do not like and will not do again if the clicks are limited.

[Advisor]

Jill did get two rankings (one for highrankings and one for rankwrite) in the early 90s ( I was lucky enough to get a ranking just below her) but names like BruceClay, Searchenginewatch, Spiderfood, etc etc are not to be found in the top 100. Yep, and I got both those through Zeal. What's interesting is I even got the keyphrase, "search engine optimization" into the title of both of those articles, yet they're still in the 90's on MSN! I guess that's good in a way, meaning they're not using the same spammy criteria that Yahoo does, but it also makes one wonder what criteria they ARE using!

(And speaking of Yahoo...today RankWrite is out of top there again and replaced by all spammy titled sites. Just yesterday it was up to about number 7!)

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Jill, that must have happened this afternoon as when I checked earlier today you were there at $7. Sheesh, is Yahoo flighty or what?

[Advisor]

Guess the spammers complained that they were nowhere to be found!

J

[ihelpyou]

http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=search+engine+optimization

Look at that!! COMPLETELY different from earlier today. I was actually getting impressed with the results until you look at that Url now. PATHETIC. Not one single SEO is in the group on the first page.

[ihelpyou]

The first 40 results are spammy in some way with either the term in the Url or a doorway page leading to the REAL site or simply just bad or all the above.

Disgusting.

[Advisor]

Yep, they were really starting to look good earlier. Hopefully someone just pushed the wrong button and the better results will be back. RW kept climbing and climbing over the past few weeks when they were showing the good results.

J