Looksmart Ranking On MSN

[projectphp]

My First Post. It feels somehow... auspicious!

In Australia there are Two Major Players players, and one falling fast former great. Google has over 50% of search (over 65% would be my guess), NineMSN has the next biggest chunk at about 20-25%, and then poor old Yahoo! in a distant third, lucky to get into double digits.

So, my questions revolve around NineMSN (which I am pretty sure is an MSN clone, so anything anyone knows about MSN pretty much applies to NineMSN) and their relationship with LookSmart, who provide the directory listing results.

Specifically, my questions are as follows:

1. How does Looksmart rank?

2. Does LookSmart rank the sites, or does MSN apply its own filter?

3. What criteria do LookSmart look for? or if that isn't important, What filter does MSN apply?

4. Are the Zeal results given more or less priority than their paid brethren?

5. Does LookSmart have a crawler, and base Rankings on traditional SEO principals, or is it based on something else?

I know 5 questions is a lot to ask in one post, but this is information I REALLY need, and can't seem to get anywhere else.

Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Tanx all in advance :cheers:

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums projectphp! :hi:

I'm not sure what type of model LS in AU has? LS in US is a paid advertising agency using a ppc model. Does AU still have regular listing in a directory?

I think members from AU might have to answer you as Looksmart has soo many different models now it's hard to say what the heck they are doing at the moment. :)

[surfcat]

Hi there - hope I can shed some light on this - I'm not an expert on the LookSmart AU/NineMsn relationship, but I ran your questions by someone who is, and here's what I found out:

1. How does Looksmart rank?

LookSmart AU (and Zeal AU) provide the directory licensed to NineMSN and this provides the majority of search results on the site. So, it ranks pretty high - generally NineMSN's Featured Sites are the only ones ranking higher.

2. Does LookSmart rank the sites, or does MSN apply its own filter?

NineMSN has their own search algorithm that ranks the Looksmart directory site profiles in the Web Directory Sites section of the NineMSN page. LookSmart also provides the listings in the Sponsored Sites section of the NineMSN page.

NineMSN provides the content of the Featured Sites section, and Inktomi provides the index at the end of the search returns in the Web Pages section.

3. What criteria do LookSmart look for? or if that isn't important, What filter does MSN apply?

LookSmart's site selection criteria are publicly available in the Zeal guidelines: http://www.zeal.com/guidelines/style/selecting_sites/

The NineMSN search algorithm has not been disclosed publicly.

4. Are the Zeal results given more or less priority than their paid brethren?

The Zeal results are given the same priority as their paid brethren in the Web Directory Sites section. But for certain searches, the Sponsored Site section displays paid listings above the directory listings.

5. Does LookSmart have a crawler, and base Rankings on traditional SEO principals, or is it based on something else?

All the sites included in the LookSmart directory are reviewed and included by staff editors or Zeal members. NineMSN is currently using Inktomi as a crawler and displays the results in the Web Pages section at the end of the returns when nothing or very little has been found in the LookSmart directory. The LookSmart Directory is only used in the Web Directory Sites section and the Sponsored Sites section.

Hope that helps - like I said, this isn't really my field of expertise (except for Zeal Australia), but if you have other questions I'll be happy to try and track down some more answers for you.

Happy holidays!
:cheers: