LookSmart UK

[oldtimer]

Is anyone else having any problems with paid submission?

I paid for a site in mid November. A week later I had the acceptance letter. Nearly 3 weeks later I asked why it wasn't listed.

Answer on 11th Dec.

"Thank you for your enquiry.
We apologise for the temporary delay in listing your site on our directory. LookSmart UK is in the process of being improved. One of the side effects of this has been a delay in updating the site.
However, updates have now been made and your site is now listed in
Hobbies - Pets & Animals - Horses - Products & Services - Other Services
These site updates are affecting the search engine, so you may have some problems searching for your listing, but we hope to resolve this soon.
Thank you for your interest in LookSmart, and our apologies for this delay.
Kate Harrad
Customer Service Editor
LookSmart UK"

It is listed but still doesn't come up in a search on any keyword. This is a site that ranks extremely well across the board.

"site updates are affecting the search engine" makes a bit of a nonsense of paying for listing if they can't even search their own database.

[engine]

Have they met their contract? If not, what about money back?

[oldtimer]

They cover themselve by putting it in the directory. They don't guarantee that it will be found.
At least the MSN UK directory has picked it up but not Excite yet.

Incidentally, an Excite UK search dropped a couple of Inktomi cookies - is that new?

[makemetop]

No sites which have been submitted since the paid-for-review plan started have yet shown up on keyword searches on Looksmart UK (I've put in about 10). I have been in touch with them several times on this subject and my latest reply was yesterday:

'...The directory has been updated so your sites should be in. However, we're having problems with the search engine so you may not find them through a keyword search at the moment. If you can give me a list of URLs, I can tell you where they should be in the directory, and you could have a look for them that way?...'

MSN UK does seem to update promptly from the database, but Excite UK seems to take about a month from acceptance. Looksmart UK (particularly Kate) have been very responsive to any e-mails and have apologised to my clients for the delay in appearing in Looksmart itself. My sites, however, have got worthwhile traffic from both MSN and Excite so I'm not complaining too much about Looksmart UK's own site which I don't think many people use!