Looksmart Annoyances

For any of you that started advertising with the Looksmart directory initially, you may recall that you had to pay a set fee and they promised you inclusion in their directory for life. That changed around mid-2002 when they moved to a pay per click system and signed up all old customers for the new service. As you might imagine, many people were unhappy about the changes and a lawsuit followed. Looksmart took measures to settle the suit – old customers got a credit each month for a period to offset the new per click charges of $.15.

And now it’s 2004 and Looksmart has yet again changed the way it manages client accounts. This new system went into place in mid December in reaction to losing its largest client, MSN. Personally, I find it annoying and am strongly considering dropping Looksmart from my search engine marketing campaigns.

I don’t run that many listings on Looksmart. Initially, I had 2 listings that dated back before its pay per click days that were fairly low maintenance. When the pay per click model was introduced, I added my 10 keywords (for a fee of course) and that was pretty much all the maintenance the listing required.

Unfortunately, now they seem to have moved to a pure pay per click model that I have yet to make sense of. From what I gather, any previous listings you had with them are still included in their directory, but your keywords didn’t switch to the new pay per click model. So, I started experimenting – adding some new keywords and a new campaign listing, and immediately ran into problems…

My Experience

In theory, you should be able to maintain your $15 monthly minimum budget. At least they claim you can. According to an email response I received (about 5 days later than when I originally submitted it), “There is no longer any listing setup fee, however there is a minimum budget requirement of $15.00 per active Inclusion listings, and $15.00 per 30 keyword listings. If you increase the number of listings, you may be asked to increase your monthly budget.”

Ok, that kind of makes sense…until you start adding keywords. I added my new listing + about 10 or so keywords. Immediately I’m told that to make the changes, I’d have to increase my monthly budget to $40 (it was $15 previously & they charged my credit card the difference) Huh? So then I try to add keywords to my other listing (already included) – again, I incur another $18 charge?

In sum, I now have 17 listings – or 2 listings + 15 different keywords that are associated with those listings and a $40 monthly budget. At this point, I’m wondering where in the world these charges came from. I go to the help section, thinking I’m incurring these charges for new inclusions or edits. I click on one of the questions “Do I have to pay to have my listing updated?” and am taken to a page that doesn’t remotely answer the question… and that’s when I emailed them.

So, what I’ve learned is that for each listing you have, it’s $15/month (since I have 2, that’s $30/month) & then they tack on an extra amount (in my case $10) for my 15 keywords (or as they claim, $15.00 per 30 keyword listings). And here’s the kicker… my maximum cost per click (CPC) was set as default to $.15. From that, I learn that a number of my keywords are in #1 and 2 positions. However, I wanted to get my #2s to #1 and tried increasing the bid to $.30. No luck – I get a warning stating that to increase my max CPC, I’d have to contact my sales representative and increase my monthly budget… again, huh?

Is It Worth It?

Now that Looksmart is no longer with MSN, I’m seriously debating the benefits of staying with them. They currently partner with Lycos, Infospace, Road Runner, CNet, Inktomi, and the Look Networks.

While Lycos is nice, you can reach the network with Lycos’ own Insite advertising (powered by Findwhat) – probably for much cheaper. Keywords I’m paying $.15 for on Looksmart, I get for $.05 on Insite.

I also advertise on Overture and Findwhat (and Google). Overture reaches Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, CNN and Infospace. Findwhat reaches CNET’s Search.com, Excite, Webcrawler, MetaCrawler, Dogpile and Microsoft Internet Explorer Autosearch.

Some Major Benefits of Overture and Findwhat Over Looksmart

• Easy to use interface! I find the new Looksmart interface to be difficult at times.
• Superior reporting structure – Looksmart hasn’t given me any breakdowns per click yet – I’ve had my campaign ‘running’ for a week now with no clickthroughs? Funny, I get pretty good results with those keywords in every other campaign… They are also 2 days behind schedule. Both Overture and Findwhat give me some idea of clickthroughs per keyword. Overture even tells me impressions.
• Lower monthly budgets. Overture requires a minimum $20/month budget – far lower than my $40 on Looksmart and I’m reaching better search engines. Findwhat doesn’t seem to require a minimum monthly fee.
• Lower minimum keyword bids. While Looksmart asks for $.15 min, Findwhat asks for $.05 and Overture asks for $.10. Granted, you’ll probably pay far more for a top position keyword on Overture than on Looksmart
• Greater reach. Overture claims their search results show up in 80% of active internet users. Findwhat doesn’t have quite as broad of a reach, but they’ve just announced a deal with Verizon Communications to help enhance local search results on SuperPages.com.

And of course, every campaign should be using Google’s Adwords… but that’s a different topic.

So, I’m still asking myself ‘is it worth it’ and as of now, don’t have an answer. I’m strongly leaning towards ‘no’, but I suppose I’ll stick it out for another month or 2, just to see if things improve.

Random Posts