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I generally have been successful with most PPC engines, so I don't understand why this is the case.
I've always assumed they have quality distribution partners, I know they lost MSN, but that should not affect things that much, or could it?
The amount of traffic they deliver is pretty strong, it's just the conversion which has not been as expected.
Has anyone tried their PPC program who could give me some feedback.
one of them is brainfox.com that gets 95% of clicks from asia (if you check the IP adresses of their clicks as I did you will find out)
The others are on the same level.
sebans
Without being able to build the traffic around the budget i could afford and having the ability to research keywords it just wasn't for me.
Glad they're getting away from the super expensive and painfull processes they used to have, but they have a ways to go before they will be competitive.
They severely need to loose that executive attitude they think they need to charge us for.
Now, maybe my site is lousy (I don't think so), but I also noticed that my site statistics show about half the visitors to my site who enter on my LookSmart tracking URL also leave the site from that URL. That would be EXTREMELY hard to do, IMHO. The tracking URL is only displayed for an instant, and looks like a regular page on my site until it refreshes to my home page. A human being would have a very difficult time entering another URL and telling the browser to go to it before the home page came up. I doubt if I could do it even if I were actually trying.
Anyone else with a similar experience?
[edited by: seth_wilde at 7:32 pm (utc) on April 13, 2004]
BTW, I only see this problem on my paid inclusion listing, which LookSmart is constantly demanding more money for. My keyword targeted listings don't seem to be affected.
I am experiencing the same thing. It seems the inclusion keywords are fairly stable, but the PPC links are skyrocketing.
Have you noticed an increase, by the way, in the last couple of days. Mine went up tremendously as of Saturday. Usually weekends are slow, so this makes no sense.
I am thinking about disabling the PPC keywords and just keeping the inclusion listings. I get very little traffic from the inclusion listings, but at least it seems to be legitimate traffic.
eWhisper, I hope you are right and this is only temporary, they have always been a reputable company. I would hate to see them fall apart like this due to MSN dropping them.
Are you seeing conversions on your end from the keyword listings? When compared to other PPC's their keyword conversion rates seem really bad.
To be fair, the number of clicks on keyword targeted listings is fairly small, but even if I only had a 1% conversion of click to call (or email), I should have gotten 6-8 contacts from keywords by now, and dozens from the inclusion listing.
As I said before, maybe my site sucks, but even if I was a Bozo, I'd expect to have gotten at least one enquiry by now....
Some of LS new partners engage in "contextual" advertising...
Mamma.com loves me. I love Mamma.com.
I also noticed that my site statistics show about half the visitors to my site who enter on my LookSmart tracking URL also leave the site from that URL. That would be EXTREMELY hard to do, IMHO. The tracking URL is only displayed for an instant, and looks like a regular page on my site until it refreshes to my home page.
That will be people hitting the browser back button.
Just got an email from LS that says their traffic partners have grown by 20% since December - which seems a bit too high since they lost MSN in January I believe.
Sent an enquiry about taking Looksmart feeds in August and got an email requesting more info about my sites last week. They seem to be actively looking for new partners (they have to or Looksmart will die).
Yea, but where did all the clicks come from?
Well, that is certainly reason for concern. When I say they need to get their partner network ironed out, part of what I'm saying is they need to weed out the bad partners, those that are producing the bad quality traffic.
From what I understand, Looksmart has a pretty good fraudulent click detection system in place, so I'm somewhat surprised about this. I don't necessarily notice any fraudulent clicks in my logs that I can see, but their traffic does not convert as well as the PPC engines I'm using. That's the main problem from my perspective.
The fact that they need partners fast to survive is part of the problem. This is likely to create a situation where they are less controlling of who is part of their network. I think eWhisper's idea of waiting it out for a while may be the best approach. Hopefully they will eventually get it together.
thanks in advance.
And to reply to the underlying theme of the thread - I am a big Mamma.com fan, too.
FAQ aside:
[listings.looksmart.com...]
As a public traded company, don't you think a 3rd party audit of referring traffic sources, which directly equals revenue, is in order?
According to this press release, they do not seem to think so:
[biz.yahoo.com...]
It is time for a change in this industry.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Seems I'm not the only one who has problems with looksmart.
