The LookSmart affect

[rpking]

When a site that is not already indexed by AV is submitted to LookSmart, then it is also added to the AV index.

How long does this addition to AV take; is it in the same ball park as the 48 hour review timescale on LookSmart?

Also, does the LookSmart listing give the AV ranking any kind of boost or are they unrelated?

Basically, is the $199 worth it?

AV is being a real pain at the moment for my most important keyword and I'm getting deperate.

[seth_wilde]

"When a site that is not already indexed by AV is submitted to LookSmart, then it is also added to the AV index"

I haven't heard of or seen any evidence of AV crawling the Looksmart directory. Normally they just use Looksmart for their "directory" listings.

"Also, does the LookSmart listing give the AV ranking any kind of boost or are they unrelated?"

I haven't noticed any.......

"Basically, is the $199 worth it?"

I think it's definitely worth it, but it's not because of looksmart.altavista.com traffic, it's the traffic from MSN that you get that really makes it worthwhile....

[ulstrup]

I'm quite convinced seth_wilde is right about AV listings.

$199 for LookSmart is absolutely worth it !

3-4 weeks after my LS listing I'm recieving good MSN traffic :)

And remember MSN is the default MSIE startup page - that is untill you change it ;)

[rpking]

Trouble is, I already get excellent traffic from MSN for my main company name.

To be fair, if you are called companyname.com, and have companyname in title description, body text and in hundreds of link texts, then surely it's not to arrogant to expect to rank fairly well under that search term (especially when it is not too common a name).

On every other engine we rank very well for all variations of our name. In AV on the other hand, we are absolutely nowhere. The top results change from time to time, but are all irrelevant (and I am not just bitter :), even though it sounds like it).

Having read some LookSmart submission guidelines somewhere, I'm sure that it says that all submissions are included automatically in the AV index. Not spidered perhaps, but included. I have been trying for weeks to get the root .com domain included but to no avail (3 updates so far, still no sign).

LookSmart was going to be away of getting the site noticed by Scooter.

It's just getting embarrasing when all your boss asks is 'where are we in AltaVista', ignoring all other progress :(

And by the way, I know that URLs and examples are necessary for detailed advice, but sorry no can do ;)

[JamesR]

rpking, the recent AltaVista algo change has really been for the worst relevancy wise in my opinion. There are a few cases like yours I know of personally and it is absolutely ridiculous, especially when you have little or no competition. It is this kind of thing that really makes me look down on AltaVista and turn to other search services i.e Goo....;)

[David]

My site is brand new, Included in the Looksmart directory on 9/28/00. With in the first week after inclusion scooter arived and took my default page, a few days later Mercator-1.0 spider the entire site.
I am now in the directory and it looks like the mercator spider results helped my rankings. Still waiting to see if I get included in the AV index.
The 199.00 was more than worth it!!
David

[rpking]

I agree totally, JamesR. Reading some of the posts about the relevancy of AV have left me bemused to say the least. I know that no algorithm can be perfect, but I have seen a few situations where irrelevancy ruled.

The top result for our company name on AltaVista was a Moldovan news page, that (on the exact day that Scooter came) had one headline low on the page that mentioned our name.

This page is then ranked number 1? That is not a relevant algorithm IMHO (OK, I'm very bitter :))

Unless of course, an exceptionally low keyword density is required, one approaching zero.