referrals from findology.com

who are they - really?

[rroberts]

Webstats for one of my affiliate sites shows several referrals from findology.com. This is eerily similar to a recent post about www.com:
[webmasterworld.com...]

I never heard of findology before, and certainly never signed up for an account.

Both findology.com and www.com display the LookSmart description for my site. Activity keeps increasing, reaching my LS budget early, with no corresponding increase in conversions.

An email to a posted address for findology was returned as undeliverable.

I just wonder what's going on. Thanks for any info.

[Tropical Island]

The listings it is showing for us are from probably from Over however it could also be FindWhat - I can't tell.
It looks like any other small search engine. If you are getting a lot of traffic from them I would certainly wonder where it was coming from.

[cornwall]

You can get their address in Santa Monica off WhoIs. Feed that into Google and you can see what else they run out of their office

[rroberts]

Thanks for the info, and the time you've taken to look at this thread.

I guess I'm just really suspicious. The particular site of mine listed on Findology has no PPC through Overture or FindWhat, just LookSmart. The site description at Findology is exactly from LookSmart - I know because the description became an issue back in December, and LookSmart agreed to amend it.

I did some digging around, and learned that the
Findology search engine has an affiliate program, and is currently offering affiliates 35% of the gross revenue generated by search box and text link traffic.

It's claimed that LookSmart will sign up to affiliate programs, so I wonder if there might not be something similar here. Or does Findology draw results from MSN/LookSmart, and other places?

Thanks again for your input. I guess we can just chalk this up to another one of those little puzzles.

[Findology]

Hello,

Sorry to enter this thread a couple weeks late, as it went under my radar until now. Im here to clarify any misunderstandings that may have been causing some confusion. Our engine maintains our own database of advertisers INCLUDING a meta-search of multiple other PPC search engines. If your links appear in our results than you are either advertising directly with us, or with one of our partners.

If you would like to provide me with any other specific information including bided terms, or the companies you use, I can look further into this issue for you.

Trevor@Findology

[sem4u]

I'm seeing a lot of referrals from Findology last month thank's to the LookSmart description. It is the fourth best referrer after Google, Yahoo & MSN.

Anyone else receiving large traffic figures through Findology?

[Andy_Reid]

What is your ROI like on the Findology referrals vs. the other three?