Forum Moderators: bakedjake
Your site could have dropped for any number of reasons, the web server might have been down, excite might have found other sites which it thought were more relevant to the query, etc.
I'd suggest analyzing the page, and those that are listed near the top, to see how they got there, html elements, links, etc. Going through the looksmart paid process guarantees spidering, and inclusion, but not ranking. Still once you're back there, it is only a matter of search, analyze, update, get spidered, and analyze, repeat, etc.
Good luck.
Jeremy