Looksmart UK finds a new home

its all over ...

[Shak]

Welcome to the new home of Looksmart.co.uk!
UK Net Guide is pleased to announce that we have agreed a deal with Looksmart.co.uk to publish their directory following their recent decision to withdraw from the UK market.

This service will be a valuable addition to our existing site making UK Net Guide the largest directory of independently reviewed websites in the UK. To receive notification of the re-launch and/or information about submitting your site to our UK directory, please enter your email address in the form below

[looksmart.co.uk...]

looks like its all over for the UK team.

UK net guide obviously had the higest bid.

be an interesting 1 to watch

Shak

[engine]

In some respects, I'm glad this has been concluded. Looksmart UK has long been neglected.

Good luck to the team involved.

[exmoorbeast]

Very confusing with the redirect..Is the brand dead or alive? If the new guys have, and good luck to them, a deal with look smart, then where is Looksmart? Did I miss something?

Anyway, It's good that someone cares about the site, only I hope that they don't completely kill off the brand as it has a lot of equity on the web. Numerous links and write ups will ensure people keep going there.

[rconway]

As far as I understand it, the redirect is due to the domain name actually being leased. I do not think that UK Net Guide have actually purchased the domain name.

I believe that this is due to Looksmart wanting to leave open the possibility of them returning to the UK market in the next few years.

Richard

[helenp]

Yes but only display looksmarts paid listing,
Thats the reason why they are spidering so heavily.

[Shak]

I agree with rconway.

domain name is on a lease/rental deal from what I hear, however the directory listings from looksmart UK are part of the deal.

Shak

[Andrey]

Interesting things are happening in the search engine world. We'll just have to wait and see how the whole "search engine domination war" is going to end. Any news on MSN and their new engine?

[max_rk]

Nice find Shak,

How the uk net guide got the gig? Was there beauty contest? Any money involved?

Regards
Max.rk

[bunder]

Would have been nice to have known if it was an open bidding contest.

I'm sure a few of us would have liked an opportunity to make a bid.

Of course, it also depends on exactly what was on offer. Was it an outright sale of the domain and the UK rights associated with that domain, or a short term deal to help Looksmart out and its existing base of UK customers.

And on that note, are there any other directories looking for an exit route. Feel free to PM me.

Leslie

[rconway]

I think it is simply a 2 year lease deal of the domain name for a six-figure amount, although I understand that they have actually bought the UK directory database.

[Bobby_Davro]

Does that include Zeal UK?

[rconway]

No I don't think Zeal is anything to do with the looksmart.co.uk deal

[Bobby_Davro]

In which case, I can't see a great deal of value in purchasing the Looksmart directory. Surely they have bought a purely commercial directory, given that Zeal provided the non-commercials, and a very small one at that?

It cost £149 to get into Looksmart UK IIRC, so I can't imagine that they have the majority of UK business sites out there. Does anyone have any information on the number of sites listed in the directory?

[rconway]

I think there were around 100,000 entries in the directory.

[Bobby_Davro]

Well, 100,000 isn't actually bad for a purely commercial UK directory. An ODP dump for the UK regional category might give a combined total of 170,000, and there are another 50,000 sites that should also be included from the ODP. Both of those numbers will include all non-commercials as well.

Do you know how much they paid for the directory?

[rconway]

I think it was a six-figure amount, around 100k plus a similar amount for a 2 year lease of the domain.

[exmoorbeast]

At best I reckon 10% of the 100k listings would have been paid submissions, and given that 20% of that 10% have probably abandoned their web sites it means that they bought about 8,000 potentially active advertisers which is a little less than what Espotting, Overture and the likes have. When Looksmart introduced PPC they did some serious damage to that user base as we know, so I wonder what the true value of that base is now? Might they have paid about 2 pounds per potential advertsier?

Well anyway, I hope the new service get's more people advertising. I bought quite a few LS entries a few years back so it will be interesting to see when / if they contact me.

[helenp]

I actually been thinking on advertise in looksmart for long.
Last month before selling the co.uk, looksmart was spidering my site a lot, the number 1 spider, and until know since they sold co.uk they only came to my site to spider the robots.txt once........... I don´t understand why.
I ever advertised with them.

[TinkyWinky]

rconway - if it's £50k per year as you say - hell that's a lot of ppc advertising money that could have benefited UKNetguide a lot more IMHO!

Checking the unreliable, but very informative, ALexa results I do not see a £50k rise in the traffic (if projected forward a few months). In fact it has put them back to where they were a few months back. How many are just checking out Looksmart from an SEO position and how many are simply curious to see what the rumour mills are saying about a change in Looksmart?

Lets see... 666,666 clickthroughs....(based on 7.5p google's) I wonder if they'll get that? That is a lot of eyes seeing what is not a bad website and content (even if you allow for 166,666 fraudulent webmasters ;) )

In terms of brand awareness for UKNetguide I would prefer the PPC route I think - nice try on the domain but I think Looksmart had it's cake a few years back and I agree that the whole ppc debacle hurt them pretty bad.

Even if they valued the PR8 (as was) I think maybe this would have been better benefitting the homepage rather than a dedicated looksmart page! Having said that I am not sure how PR values stack up these days.

So in a rather rambly summary (sorry!) - a good deal to go after but rather expensive IMHO! At £20k per year - now that's a different story.