Paid for LS: Never again!

I finally bit the bullet last week and paid the $200 to submit to Looksmart. This was my own website, but I figured that if it worked well, I'd use it for some of my clients as well.

Carefully crafted a description that hit the right keywords yet was still pretty much on target with how most of their descriptions read. I figured that at $200 per URL, they'd try and leave you happy that you shelled out for it.

WRONG!

They butchered my title AND description!

How much traffic have I gotten from Looksmart in the last week off this listing? About 5.

At this rate, I'd have been much better off paying goto.com per click.

Best of all, my polite e-mail to expsvc@looksmart.net last Friday has gotten exactly *no* response. What customer service!

I guess I'll chalk up the $200 to "learning"...

I'm not sure I understand the point of using GoTo.com. To me it seems that GoTo.com does not provide the best results for a search, but simply provides the ones that are willing to pay the most. Someone who is willing to pay a lot for a top listing is not necessarily going to have the best site.

I guess I am looking at this from a searcher's perspective. Not sure I would waste much time either as a searcher or as a developer.

Any thoughts?

johno

I just joined Bay9. Does anyone know how long it takes after one initially signs up/adds keywords to when those keywords appear online? I wrote customer support have not received a response yet.

Dave,

I'm very sorry to hear that your experience with them has not been good. I have held off from laying out $200 because of stories like yours.

I'm willing to bet that they will eventually reply to you and make things right, or at least compromise with you, but that's not the whole point: I'd rather deal with companies that do things right the first time, instead of after-the-fact customer service that is half-hearted at best.

I can only speculate from a searcher's standpoint as to why GoTo.com is used. I can imagine that it's good when you're searching for vendors. While some vendors don't have great-looking sites, the products and prices they offer can be better than those of other competitors who do have better-looking sites.

You might not get the exact response that you want, since most of us here are looking at search engines from a developer's perspective, but hopefully this will provide some insight.

Ben

I opened an account with Bay 9
THREE weeks ago and set up some keywords.

They have still not been added.

I have sent SEVEN Emails and have left
THREE phone messages which were not
answered.

I finally got to speak to someone
in Customer support who said he
would investigate. Nothing happened.

I made one further call on May 24 leaving a
message and 15 minutes later, possibly
in response, I received a reply to an Email
I had sent on May 11th , that is a gap of
THIRTEEN days.

The author completely failed to read my message
and simply trotted out the standard answer
"In order to upload your keywords, you must submit
your keyword spreadsheet to us and then we may
process your claim"

What a shambles.

Harvey Segal
hsegal@supertips.com

Check the confirmation email they sent. I believe there may be another e mail address listed in the body of their confirmation where you should send your request.

Explain the situation in terms of accuracy; _not_ because you're getting bad positions. Either the title, description, or both, incorrectly describe your business and here's why...

Above all, be polite.

Goto.Com is an Inktomi partner, so even people like me, who don't pay for listings, have a shot at showing up in searches under terms where businesses are not bidding up the slots. Hence, the average surfer is getting a reasonably large database which just happens to be skewed by whatever people are willing to pay for. Some surfers may feel that's ideal, since a business will put its money where its mouth is if it believes in its products or services. (Or, at least, that is what a business SHOULD be doing.)

Sounds very stressful... I hope your situation is soon resolved. Thanks for sharing with me an idea of what I hope to be a worst case scenario

Checked my confirmation e-mail....
I had it right... expsvc@looksmart.net

I was extremely polite, though I may have said something about no possible searches returning my site.

From my viewpoint, for a $200 fee, some consideration should be allowed to that end.... they're in business to make money... and so are we. If they screw enough of us, nobody makes any money with them... including Looksmart!

I'm really tired of bidding against All Avantage Get Paid to surf Ads on GoTo. These are not web sites, there just gateway pages to their ID link. GoTo Stop the Madness!!!

I had a bit of trouble getting my Bay9 account up and running but once that got done new keywords were updated instantaneously (ie automated service; new keywords aren't approved by human editors). But the random 5 cents ad results generated for every keyword was enough to to annoy me. That and the negligeable traffic I'm getting from them is a good guarantee that I won't be adding anymore funds anytime soon. GoTo, Findwhat and Sprinks will do the trick for now.

Dave,
Sorry to hear about your experience. Maybe enough people will learn of circumstances such as yours and refuse to pay $200 to be listed. LS doesn't bring enough traffic to my sites to warrant such a fee especially after multilating titles and descriptions.

I actually think that the idea of goto.com is actually a great one for both searchers AND webmasters. Now that I've said that, i suppose i should defend it.

For the most part, goto.com's results seem to be fairly relevant. They appear to take some time to verify that a site IS relevant to the search. HowEVER....

Lately, i've noticed a fair amount of two things appearing:

1) Affiliate sites which have no content other than the affiliateship - sometimes these are just mirrors of the original site, or sites done with a template.

2) Links for almost EVERY search term which say "Search for documents about 'search term' on Xsite.com ..... why would I want my search answered with another way to search? (unless I was searching for search engines)

I think if goto stops for a minute and takes a look at those things... and keeps up the quality review process - it'll continue to be a good engine for both consumers and webmasters.

Thanks for the input...I appreciate it. It looks like my initially set up words will be online tomorrow (someone called me today to get my go-ahead approval). So in my case it looks like about 3 business days til initial set up.

I had the exact same experience also about 2 months ago. I shelled out $200 for a listing there and they butchered the description much to my avail. Although I was able to ask them to change the description and they complied.

The bottom line is that I get so little traffic from from their site (Looksmart) and even partner sites such as Excite and MSN.

I say if you got $200 to shell out, give it to Yahoo first as my traffic skyrocketed when I paid for the Yahoo listing.

I agree with you Silv. I am also of the midset that the company willing to pay is likely successful, and therefore likely to also meet my consumer needs.

ccassata:

Last I heard you could only get Exp. listings in the Business & Economy section in Yahoo! Not to get off topic, but can I use the Exp. for any listing now? I'd pay for about 10 listings if I could....

PS: A week since I e-mailed LS and still not a peep back...

Silv, you forgot Chat sites* "Come talk about the search term your searching for @...... One more Law firms listed under any posslble legal action term.

Please post if they do respond, I would be surprised if they do since I have never had an email response from Looksmart, the only search engine that has never responded.

They did respond to a post I made in the Looksmart forum months back, asking me to email direct, but still no response to that.

Good Luck.