~~~High Search Engine Rankings~~~
From: Brian Piepgrass
Looksmart's stock price has fallen to well below a dollar. And there
is a lawsuit against them and the securities companies which oversaw their IPO.
Paid placement services are coming under scrutiny with bias issues as their focus.
I would be very interested to know what your reaction is to this news,
and whether or not you think that the $300 (or even the $150)
Looksmart fee is worth paying given that they might not be around a
year from now. There was also a very interesting post from Michael
Martinez in the bCentral Daily Digest #1142... One comment that was made was:
"As for Looksmart, I will be surprised if they are still in business a
year from now. It will take an act of God to save that company, in my
humble opinion."
I was about to submit a site for inclusion in their directory, but now
I'm not so sure... what should I do?
Brian Piepgrass
Web Marketing Specialist
www.ACDSYSTEMS.com
~~~Jill's Response~~~
Hey Brian!
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to do one of my favorite things,
that is, trash on LookSmart! Many of you have heard me speak poorly
of LookSmart over the past year or so, and perhaps I should explain my
beef with them once and for all. It has nothing to do with how much
*reach* they have or don't have; it's more a personal thing based on
my dealings with them over the years. So sit back and enjoy the
thrashing!
As some of you know, I got into this biz back in '95 while learning to
position my informational site for parents (The Parentsroom: http://www.parentsroom.org). The site had a huge amount of my blood,
sweat and tears put into it over many years and grew to be quite a
resource for anything parent related. When LookSmart first opened its
doors, they were owned by Reader's Digest. (Did you all know that?
Does anyone remember their really cool, but slow, java navigational
interface back in those days? They were way ahead of their time,
considering most people were dialing up on 14.4k modems or slower!)
Back then, their editors would comb the Internet looking for good
sites to place in their directory. When they chose your site to be in
their directory, they even sent you a little LookSmart graphic that
said, "LookSmart editor's choice," to show your visitors that you were
good enough to get into their prestigious directory. (I think mine
might still be up on my site!) In those days, it really was quite an
honor when my Parentsroom site was chosen as one of the "Best of the
Web" in the category of parenting. As a side note, around the same
time, my site was also added into Yahoo's burgeoning directory.
Well, things change, and LookSmart was bought out, etc., etc. The URL
for my site also changed a couple of times through the years. When
this happened, I'd submit a change to Yahoo and they'd immediately
change it to the new URL (I know...weird, huh? But they used to be
really good at doing this for non-commercial sites). But not
LookSmart. If I remember correctly, they did eventually edit the URL
the first time it changed. When I got a real domain name for the site
years later (late 1999 perhaps?), nothing happened. It remained with
the old (broken) URL in their directory. I kept submitting change
requests, to no avail, until suddenly it was removed from their
directory all together! This, of course, was right around the time
when they instituted their pay-for-placement routine (what a strange
coincidence!). And then, to twist the knife further, they started
sending emails to my Parentsroom email address about their nifty
pay-for-placement program! Every few months I'd get an email from
them about this. Now remember, my site is totally informational in
nature. It's not technically a nonprofit, but believe me, it brings
no profit other than the occasional sale of a parenting book in
association with Amazon.com.
As the grand finale to this story, when I was at the Search Engine
Strategies conference in Dallas last November, I happened upon the
LookSmart exhibit table where they were pushing their oh-so-wonderful
pay-for-placement model. I decided to discuss my Parentsroom dilemma
with the unfortunate representative. She swore to me that it must
have simply been a coincidence that my URL was suddenly missing from
their directory right around the same time they instituted their new
model. When I told her how I had emailed over and over again to
request that they update my URL, she actually said something to the
effect of, "well, we don't always get those emails"!!! (Ask Heather,
she was there and heard the whole thing!) So either they were
purposely deleting URLs in hopes that the site owner would now pay
them, and/or they filter all emails and change requests straight to
their trash can. In either case, it doesn't sound like a great way to
run a business!
So you can see, LookSmart is not my most favorite company on the
Internet. I've also been totally frustrated with them in the past for
the way they edit submitted descriptions. For years I could get my
descriptions into Yahoo! fairly intact, but LookSmart always had to
stick their fingers into the pie and totally ruin whatever I
submitted. I will say that this seems to be changing over the past
six months. Either I'm getting better at figuring out what they want,
or they've been hammered for this practice long enough and are doing
less keyphrase deletions. I think there may be a little of both going
on.
Okay...with that long-winded preface out of the way, let's discuss the
current state of affairs at LookSmart. Raising their submission fee
50% to $299??? They are definitely taking a big chance with that. Is
it worth it? I don't think I can really say, at this point. I have
lots of clients from years ago who never had a LookSmart listing and
still get great rankings everywhere, along with tons of traffic. We
don't have our Rank Write site in LookSmart, and again, get lots of
traffic. LookSmart itself does not bring much traffic to most sites,
and you can still get into their partner engines through other means.
(Check out Rank Write issue 056 to see which search
engines are shacking up with which directories!) I don't personally
believe that being in LookSmart is a necessity right now, but I am not
prepared to say that you should not submit to them if you can afford
it. I do submit all of my current clients to them (although I haven't
submitted any at this new price). But my clients are paying a pretty
hefty fee for their optimization services, because they want to know
for sure they will get high rankings, and want to be assured it will
be done right the first time. To these folks, $199 or $299 to
LookSmart is not a lot to pay for piece of mind. However, for those
of you on limited budgets who are experimenting with SEO on your own,
it may or may not be worth it. I have been told by my buddy Doug at
the IHelpYouServices Forums
that a LookSmart listing can spur many of the search engine spiders to
come-a-crawlin'. He claims that he doesn't even have to submit
anywhere else (including Inktomi) once his sites are listed in
LookSmart. So that is certainly something to think about. I
personally will never give LookSmart one red cent of my own money for
the privilege of getting listed with them!
As to whether or not they'll still be around a year from now...well,
I'm not a student of business management and don't feel qualified to
speak about that. I can say, that in my opinion, their arrogance at
assuming people NEED to be in their directory, giving them the freedom
to charge whatever they feel like, may certainly come back to bite
them in their rear end somewhere down the line! Wouldn't it be cool
if Reader's Digest bought them back?
For other LookSmart information, check out Rank Write issue 027.
Jill
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