LookSmart 4 Quarter

[Brett_Tabke]

[eweek.com...]

The San Francisco-based company warned late Thursday that it would not meet its earlier earnings guidance for year-end 2004 and announced a series of executive moves as it attempts to restructure its business.

Press Release:
[biz.yahoo.com...]

"As previously announced, LookSmart did not properly deploy sufficient sales resources in the fourth quarter and we are obviously not satisfied with this outcome," stated Chief Executive Officer David Hills. "We have identified the underlying causes of these problems and have made the appropriate adjustments, including hiring two industry veterans to lead our paid listings and consumer products divisions.

[Rugles]

I predicted their demise a few years back, I will stand by my prediction..... they are not long for this world. Sorry if that if it offends anyone.

[Lord Majestic]

Sorry if that if it offends anyone.

For when the truth offends it shows that the end is near...

[Rugles]

Very poetic My Lord,

I think I remember L$ reps lurking in these forums before, I was trying to be polite to them.

[contentsiteguy]

There's a saying that goes like this... you can tell how successful a search engine is by the number of posts per day in their forum on Webmasterworld.

The decline was obvious a long time ago and I do hope they get their act together but those companies with the best interests of its users in mind are the ones who will ultimately succeed in the long run. And that goes for webmasters too.

"Quick profit" company decisions will decisively kill a company's profits quickly.

-contentsiteguy

[grelmar]

On the plus side, when they finally do collapse, they should be able to get at least a couple hundred bucks for the domain name by selling it to a clothing etailer.

[matimer]

If the stock drops to a 100 million (market cap) look for someone like Microsoft to come and pick it up on the cheap.

It'd give Microsoft their own overture/adwords style system and then they could fade out the overture deal.

Not to mention...
FindArticles · Furl · Grub · LookListings · Net Nanny · WiseNut · Zeal

-Matimer

PS.... hell microsoft paid something like $250 million for linkexchange.com (back during bubble #1) so this would be just a drop in the bucket

[Rugles]

I remember getting monthly calls from a L$ rep wanting a huge sum of money for pay-per-click (after I had already paid for a lifetime directory listing). It was at a time when I was receiving massive organic traffic from G. I could never think of a good reason to whip out the visa card when our shipping department was having trouble keeping up with orders.

[maximillianos]

Yeah, I remember that day a few years ago when they came knocking on my email inbox asking for money. It was pathetic. Every month I would get an email saying my "free" clicks had run out for the month, and I was missing out on huge amounts of traffic. I could easily remedy the problem if I cut them a check for XXX.XX.

They should be called "LookingForMoney".

[GameMasterM]

"It'd give Microsoft their own overture/adwords style system and then they could fade out the overture deal.
Not to mention...
FindArticles · Furl · Grub · LookListings · Net Nanny · WiseNut · Zeal
-Matimer"

Oddly their traffic is at all time highs.
-- They have a nice array of products, surely there is a suitor/savior down the road.
Why have they not updated Wisenut? Do they actually spider for it anymore?

[FridayNight]

Their traffic is up. You don't know something and you're saying nonsense. Wait and see.

[skibum]

Seems like before they get sales people, they need a product someone would want to pay for.

[funandgames]

Yahoo is next...

[FridayNight]

Next for what

[Rugles]

I am certainly not ready to predict Yahoo's demise, particularily after the last earnings report.

[lorenzinho2]

< Why have they not updated Wisenut? Do they actually spider for it anymore?

Yes, Wisenut's bot is still pretty active.

[FridayNight]

[alexa.com...]

[SlyOldDog]

Perhaps this is more objective. Lies and damned lies and statistics.

[alexa.com...]

[tictoc]

Where does looksmart get their traffic from anyway? Looksmart uses up all of my funds every month.

I think MSN will buy them. MSN would be stupid to keep using Overture results.

[Chris_D]

when they finally do collapse, they should be able to get at least a couple hundred bucks for the domain name by selling it to a clothing etailer.

<wiping coffee off screen, keyboard, desk>

ROTFL!

[skibum]

They still have lots of "traffic" but the CPC people are willing to pay for it dropped from $0.17 to $0.14. In the world of PPC, that says something is seriously screwed up.

MSN doesn't need LookSmart, they'll launch their own PPC program soon enough. Just a matter of time.

[tbird]

ActDumb, er LookSmart has continued to ignore users, advertisers, and webmasters over the past several years. That type of business model does not lend itself to an enduring great company. I'm afraid Looksmart's days are numbered.

[madmatt69]

I was actually surprised to see them at PubCon in Vegas - I thought they were already out of business, or awfully close to it.

Guess it's just a matter of time unless they shake something up.

[FillDeCube]

I tried Looksmart PPC, it uses up all my credit $400 within one day (and no sales from there). I look at my log and found that, some aff. program that pay user to click on ads has uses all my credit.

I wrote to looksmart and complain the idea of paying visitors to click on ads but nothing return.

I believe that's why they fail.

[razinkane]

Yahoo's sitematch duplicates Looksmart's biz plan, And heck I paid them both to list my site... But No more

[rise2it]

Seems pretty apparant we (all being current or former customers) share the same thoughts...

[johnwhitesmith]

looksmart? Who uses looksmart anymore? Lol

[GameMasterM]

Somebody uses LookSmart. Traffic looks to have doubled in the last two weeks. Who took them on? I like Furl well enough. Nice to see Giles find a home for his project!

[kreeder]

"Somebody uses LookSmart. Traffic looks to have doubled in the last two weeks."

The fundamental problem is that those "somebodies" are not doing any legitimate searching, they are just looking to get paid to click. The pay-for-click junkies took complete control of LookSmart a few months ago. I can't imagine why there are any advertisers left at all.

[nate_king1]

LookSmart is probably going to be bought up since their company price is so cheap to get all those existing advertisers.