MSN "Top Pick" from Looksmart/Zeal returns a 404 error

...and they won't fix it... no response from customer service.

[Bentler]

I work in a government agency that hosts a festival that's coming up next month. The festival Web site is listed in Zeal, shows up in Looksmart, and is listed as the "Top Pick" in a search for the festival's name at the top of MSN's serps beside the colorful little butterfly icon. It's plain that the MSN listing originates from Zeal/Looksmart because the descriptions are identical. The listing at Looksmart/Zeal works fine, and MSN's "Top Pick" has the right URL associated with it, but on clicking it, MSN returns a 404 error page from its own site.

I requested MSN fix its bad link and after a few back & forth emails, the MSN rep told me she'd forward my request to Looksmart and Looksmart staff would reply as soon as they received it. About an hour later I received a promotional email brochure from Looksmart describing how its small business listings work and how much it would cost me to list our festival with Looksmart.

I followed up with the MSN rep requesting they either fix the bad link or remove our site from their "Top Pick". We have no budget for Looksmart's PPC for one thing and we'd have the top listing spot on MSN due to Inktomi for another-- but mainly, it doesn't seem reasonable for MSN to send our customers from their top listing to their 404 error page-- a lot of Web users are clueless and might mistake the 404 error as meaning our site no longer exists. After having sent several emails to MSN's customer service over several weeks, I've received no reply.

Am I off-base to believe MSN/Looksmart are using their position to extort business out of my organization? Any suggestions on how to get a response out of these people? Thanks.

[rfgdxm1]

I believe MSN selects its "Top Picks" on their own. If you say this works on Looksmart, then MSN has just hosed things somehow. And, if you are with a governmental agency, odds are you can get this listed for free in Zeal.

[Bentler]

We're listed for free in Zeal already. The top pick link, [search.msn.com...] which returns [search.msn.com...] suggests to me that our listing is stripped out of the directory feed MSN receives from Looksmart. The fact that MSN referred me to Looksmart to solve the problem and that Looksmart sent me a sales brochure as the "solution" seems to reinforce that Looksmart flagged our festival site as a listing that must be paid. Anyone else run into a similar problem & solved it?

[rfgdxm1]

If you want, you can sticky mail me the particulars so that I can check this out in detail. I am an Expert Zealot over at Zeal, and if this is a Zeal listing, and is somehow being botched by MSN, I can at least shake the trees of the Looksmart editors over this matter. If this listing originates from Looksmart, having people get 404s clicking on it won't exactly make people want to use MSN/Looksmart, which for Looksmart is bad for business.

[Bentler]

Thanks RF, I'll do that. Interesting-- now a zeal search using the event name doesn't return a match even though it did before and still does in Looksmart. However, a search for our organization name does bring up the listing in Zeal-- it's identified with the published and unpaid listing icons. I'll send you the info & see what you make of it. I really appreciate the help.

[Adria]

From your description it sounds to me like there is a problem in the feed to MSN.

MSN does select the Top Picks itself. It is done by hand, by an editor, from the listings that are imported from LookSmart.

When you mouse-over the link in the MSN listing, does it show the correct URL? The display URL (which shows in the listing) is not necessarily what the functioning link is, so there may be a typo in there.

Sounds to me like you are stuck between two groups with not much motivation to fix your problem. If you could get the attention of an MSN editor, they could most likely fix your problem overnight. But since there's only about three left, that's not going to happen unless you can make a loud fuss. Going through LookSmart may not see much action, because their listing works just fine.

How long has this listing been broken for, do you know? Because if it is just an error in the MSN feed, maybe you just need to wait for the MSN feed to be reimported. The error may very well be fixed just by that.

[Bentler]

When I mouseover the link in the MSN listing, it shows the url, [search.msn.com...] (the portion of the url referencing our site is the right one). However, our listing never made it to search.msn.com and search.msn.com throws an error when its clicked.

I just checked the msn.com category our listing should be in and I may have identified why it's not there-- the category contains exactly 200 listings in alphabetical order with only A-F included -- no F-Z. It's a big category, and it appears its listing was cut off at the first 200. Looks like a problem with how the feed is processed either as it leaves Looksmart or as MSN receives it.