Is Google Pulling LookSmart Paid Listings?

[RaraAvis]

Check this out and tell me what you think:

We did a search on Google for "keyword" (without the quotes).

The Top 5 results (maybe more) were IDENTICAL to the Directory Results on MSN and the paid listings on LookSmart. Not just the domains, but the Title/Descriptions were identical. They were Directory results because nowhere on any of the homepages was the text that Google displayed as the description (copy, Title, Description tag, etc.).

We've repeated this w/ several folks we know pay for LookSmart and have found multiple examples of Google's results being identical with MSN's Directory (i.e. LookSmart)

The results are different from the last time we did the search when there was no comparison at all between Google and LookSmart.

Am I missing something? On LookSmart's site it doesn't say anything at all about feeding Google results.

Ideas?

[edited by: NFFC at 9:26 pm (utc) on Jan. 21, 2003]
[edit reason] Specifics removed [/edit]

[Fiver]

I don't see any of the similarities you're talking about :/

[glengara]

Neither do I ;-)

[Yidaki]

I saw teoma results at google. Doesn't mean that google know owns teoma. ;)

I bet the reason is a missing or badly written robots.txt at MSN, LookSmart ...

[bird]

Zero overlap between the two result sets. Are you sure you were really looking at Google?

[RaraAvis]

Actually, I made screenshots of both Google and MSN's results because they were spelled correctly and identical. Is there a way to post screenshots on the forum? If not, you can go to my homepage listed in my Profile. I hope it's ok to sayt that! :) We're not talking about any clients, etc...was just doing research for something.

The strange thing is that we could see it on different computers at the same time...but later...did the same search and the results were different. They've switched back and forth several times even when clicking from the Google Toolbar where the last search term stays (in other words didn't retype it).

[edited by: NFFC at 10:46 pm (utc) on Jan. 21, 2003]
[edit reason] Prolfile removed - No specifics is quite specific! [/edit]

[Fiver]

don't see a homepage listed in your profile

...
oooh quick one ;)

[Fiver]

well the google results in your screenshot certainly don't seem to be regular google results. snippets are not snippets, no cache/similarpages/date etc.

can't replicate the issue at this end though :/ not much in the way of answers.

[RaraAvis]

Hey...but at least I'm not CRAZY! :)

[mat_bastian]

I don't recall ever seeing a google page with no PR... odd.

[bird]

Someone is playing a joke with us.

Either it's you, Google, or anyone on the networking path in between...

[Fiver]

I don't recall ever seeing a google page with no PR... odd.

no thats what a google SERP should show...

[Dr Greenthumb]

pretty funny

[Giacomo]

Sounds more like a nightmare to me. :o