johno

Your title should be only your company's or website's name. They do say that in the margin next to the title field. (at least on the free submission form) I would never pay the 200 bones after seeing and hearing about the lack of traffic and service LS provides.

I strongly agree on that one, Silv. That category of sites occupy a ridiculous number of spots. And frequently the site has no existing content for the specific search term. So, yes, a person CAN search for the item at those sites. They won't necessarily find the item, though.

Like I said, when you correspond with them, make sure to put whatever they had put in the subject field into the subject field of the email you send them. Like this

Re: ORDER XXXXXXX [#XXXXXXX]

I hope that helps out. Also look at the thread A Question for anyone who paid for listing, for other both good and bad experiences with LS.

My request was sent to expsvc@looksmart.net, on May 22 2000:

***************************
Thanks for including our listing in Looksmart. Looksmart is clearly becoming a major force in Internet directories, being featured both by MSN and Excite's results.

We are very concerned that your customers **will not be able to get relevant results** when searching on our most commonly searched terms. The most commonly searched terms for our sites, in order, are:

'Norwegian sweaters'
'Norway sweaters'
'mens cardigans'
'sweaters'

Our listing has been changed extensively from what was submitted.

Submitted:
"Shop for Norwegian wool sweaters in our secure online Yahoo Store. Men's and women's cardigans, crew neck sweaters, and v-neck sweaters. USA-based"

Actual listing:
"View pictures of ski sweaters made in Norway. Visit the gallery and find shipping policies and instructions on ordering merchandise."

This description is flat, uninteresting, and doesn't give people the information they need to decide if they want to visit our store. Every online store has mundane areas, such as shipping policies and instructions on ordering merchandise. This does not add value for your customers. They want to know what type of sweaters we sell, if we sell men's and women's sweaters (gender is a very popular search term for our customers), and where we are located. This is a major differentiator for our store, as most online stores of our type are located in Norway, which is very inconvenient for mail-order customers.

Furthermore, on searches that are customers are likely to use, our store will not appear in the search results, which leads to a loss of relevancy for your directory customers. People searching on 'norwegian sweaters' will not even find the store! This really reduces the relevancy of the Looksmart directory, which would be a shame.

For the sake of your customers, please reconsider and use our original wording. The existing listing does not accurately reflect what is important to your search customers.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Gregory Close
***************************

Have not received a reply, nor a change in the listing, yet, in a week. I will post when I do get a response. If anyone has any contacts over there, please do let me know.

Cheers,
Gregory
gclose@affinisoft.com http://www.affinisoft.com
We drive TRAFFIC to your website

Norway Sweaters
Shop for Norwegian wool sweater in such styles as men's and women's cardigans, crew-neck sweaters, and V-neck sweaters. Place an order.

This is much better. Whew!

Cheers,
Gregory

With customer service like this, I don't see how they can survive the market...

Not that it actually comes up in a search for any of the keywords ;-) but that's not their fault.

Very happy to see the free listings back....
I had hoped they'd index some of my sub-sections (which need to be listed separately to be found by anyone) but they did not... So I plan to use the free submission for them. I simply can't afford $199 for another 15 submissions ;-)

The commercial sites will still have to pay, they are not getting in for free. They need the money to make Looksmart better, hire more editors and so on. I don't mind paying, but I highly disagree that $199 is the correct amount.

We should email Looksmart and ask that the commercial fee be lowered. The search results are not as good as Yahoo's. They do not show multiple categories as well. They are in the testing phase now, and it's the time to give our opinions. They do listen to web site owners because they are building a reputation with us.

Nat.