looksmart directory. worth paying for it?

[french dread]

Is it interesting to pay £149 to be included in the uk looksmart directory when we we aim uk market?
Or is there a uk SE or directory to spend the same amount of money for bigger potential trafic?
(we already are in yahoo.com)

and what are the more important uk SEs and directories to submit to?

thanks :)

[markymark]

Yeah, Looksmart UK is worth the money - mainly for MSN.co.uk, but it also provides results to some UK ISPs and to UKPlus.

Other search engines - the usual suspects, really. AskJeeves (ask.co.uk) is pretty big over here and there is still traffic to be had from altavista.co.uk - so you might like to target these also.

[french dread]

ok give thanks for the info :)

[dinom]

I target these but also google.co.uk is really taking off over here


Yahoo local listing
Looksmart.co.uk
lycos.co.uk [this may change, they used to be the way into ask.co.uk]
altavista.co.uk
Inktomi [non-paid]

[markymark]

lycos.co.uk [this may change, they used to be the way into ask.co.uk]

In what way is Lycos UK a way into Ask UK. This is new to me.

[mojo_jojo]

I think it depends on how competitive your keywords are - very often you have to wade through a long list of 'featured' and 'sponsored' lisings before you get to any editorial results (provided by Looksmart, then by Inktomi).

You might be better off spending your money on a pay-per-click campaign with Overture if you want to appear at the top of MSN results.

Looksmart itself doesn't drive much traffic - it's only really worth it to get into MSN. And if you're still going to appear right at the bottom of the page after your competitors who are doing ppc with Overture, it's probably not worth it.

[123domainname]

We paid for Looksmart about 4 months ago and I have to say, we've not really had much traffic to speak of from it. However, even if we only get 20 buyers a year that were sourced from Looksmart UK, it will have been worth it for us.

As others have said on this thread, Looksmart results are often diluted by a whole heap of sponsored listings and I don't think people always search through to get to the Looksmart listings!

I don't regret spending the money as it's not a huge amount and we are getting some traffic but it'll never be Google!!!

That's my 2p worth!

[robwatts]

I recently used the looksmart uk submit a site service.

Im getting a fair bit of traffic and have seen traffic rise by 5% so from that viewpoint money well spent.

Lots of msn, ntl, tiscali and bt referalls.

Based upon current traffic for this particular site, I expect the advert to pay for itself in around a month.

I just hope they dont do to their submit a site customers what their .com namesakes did :mad:

[jazzman]

how do you know if your site is in the directory, a site I am optimising appears when you search on its name but does not seem to appear in the directory.

sorry for such a stupid question!

[tree]

Jazzman, there are basically 5 groups of listingson MSN.co.uk. If you search on MSN.co.uk for 'heathrow airport hotels' you'll see them all on a couple of pages.

Sites on MSN.co.uk are always in this order:

1. Featured sites (in this case expedia - now there's a shock)

2. Sponsored sites (from overture - first 3 listings on each page)

3. Web directory sites (pulled from looksmart.co.uk)

4. Web directory sites US (pulled from looksmart.com)

5. Web pages (from Inktomi)

I guess your site is under 'web pages' section for the term you have optimised for. If you want it in the directory section you have to pay (see the comments above).

Depending on the number of websites featured above your current listing, it may or may not be worth the investment.

[surfcat]

Originally posted by tree

3. Web directory sites (pulled from looksmart.co.uk)

4. Web directory sites US (pulled from looksmart.com)
Don't forget that these also include results from Zeal UK (http://uk.zeal.com)and Zeal.com (http://www.zeal.com). We handle the noncommercial listings :)