Forum Moderators: open
Thank you for taking the time to write, however I feel I must point out that is traditional to send a letter before changes are made not after [just a tip from Business 101].
Whilst I appriciate you making the effort to explain the recent changes I must declare that I think it is a dumb move, poorly implimented and with no chance of sucess.
Rest assured that I will never spend another penny with Looksmart.
Best Regards,
NFFC
One problem with the 'change' is that the whole LS model went from one for all website owners to commercial webmasters only who could afford (at the very least) 15c per click. Even if 1 customer in 100 converted, your product would have to be work $15 USD to break even, and thats just for the lead, not the closing of the sale, nor production and distribution.
That came as a shock to many who had already invested in LS. Looksmart should have been more forthcoming from the start that this was not an upgrade - The old program had finished and they were launching a new one targeted only at websites with high cost services and products to sell.
In short, Ls had moved from being a mainstream search engine and search results provider to being a commercial one like Overture which only makes sense to commercial sites. By having a one price pricing (which isnt really as it seems you have to pay more to get good ratings) they were willing to lose many small payers for a few 'large players'.
Its a strategy of targeting the high end market only, but the question is how long will MSN want these results? I guess as long as their share is high enough, which it may well be if they grab a lot of AOL users who use MSN as theur default search. Long term however, people continue to use search services less, and as they become savvy they depart for less commercially influenced results in dedicated search services such as google, Fast and co.
LS will last only as long as Web users use the search service on their default home page (at the moment really only MSN). I feel the strategy is flawed just because the future of such search is very iffy.
Their initial sign up goals have been met they say.
My business is a relative newcomer in a low transaction volume, big-ticket travel segment and the MSN exposure critical, so I swallowed the fury, let pragmatism prevail and provided the credit card. Having done so the view of course changes and my, no doubt unpopular, ire about this letter is directed at the weasel words on FAQ # 3 regarding inclusion of non paying sites deemed to be essential for relevance. This is annoying and insulting to anyone who is coughing up only to see 11 out of 15 directory results on our central and completely commercial search term are well established direct competitors in for free. It’s irritating enough as is without being condescendingly told that my competitors are more relevant to the business we are all engaged in.
This example does however highlight Looksmarts’ most serious weakness, IMO, and that has been an institutional unwillingness to communicate with their customers. No doubt the letter was micro analyzed, role played and brainstormed to death before release; as indeed it should have been after the last fiasco. The problem is that this was done in a vacuum, with the only feedback from customers being the impossible to ignore storm raging about the “upgrade”. Their emails have had a cocoon of isolation about them where you felt trapped in a maze of auto responders, all saying don’t respond to this message, as we are not accepting any communications on whatever issue this is. If they continue to be too frightened to hear what is p***ing off their customers then they are doomed to continue doing so, which is a poor way to run a business.
That probably also explains why the letter doesn’t address the most serious shortcoming of their offering, which is having to pay for irrelevant rather than targeted search phrases. If they had listened to their customers this would have been flagged as one of the most serious business issues that needed addressing in the CEO’s communiqué. At least he indicates some awareness of the underlying communication problem and signed off with his own email address. Anyhow that’s my 2c worth and time for a cold one.
Dear Mr. Thorney,
This comment is not only insulting, it is untruthful. Yes, everyone understood that there was no guarantee that their site would be included in the LookSmart Directory upon paying to submit their site for review, but once accepted, it was most assuredly understood that traffic would follow.
This statement is 100% hogwash and beyond belief! Why else would people take the chance and pay your editorial staff to review their site? How stupid do you think we are?
I thought it was PPC
Dr Mr Thornley
I do not use PPC, do not use looksmart. Last time I looked PPC was "pay per click" meaning any sum of money I give to you is returned to me in the form of visitors > clicking = traffic will follow
As a neophyte, I'm lost to the cause. However, if PPC ever enchanted me to use PPC, then rest assured the "honest, public feedback" deduces to me that I cannot trust a 3rd party company to deliver me traffic when there is no assurances of traffic arriving.
I ask looksmart if it has double standards. If there is no guarantee or stable ground for the paying user, then why should Looksmart seriously expect the intelligent public to part with their money for something that "is not guaranteed".
In light of the above, it puts the words "look smart" into a whole new light. I am way out of my depth writing here, but rest assured, money is money, and I do not throw it at companies who bend the rules to their liking with total disregard to the customer base that made "look" as "smart" as it makes out to be today.
my 0.02 to a company that aims to monetize the net, regardless of my lack of knowledge in PPC and subtely removing money from peoples' bank accounts
The insult to me is the suggestion that "we asked for it". We certainly did want to get more traffic, but nobody asked us to pay rediculous amounts for it. So next time someones suggests enhancements to our service, we are going to change the service so its totally different, and in many cases increase the cost from 10 to 100 times, maybe much more. Now how long will we stay in business I wonder, with that sort of customer research?
Even if he did, how does LS expect people to do business with a company they don't trust? Sorry, but I don't pay ransoms, as that only encourages more extortion.
G'nite LookSmart, its been painful to know you.
SEOs stood for a lot. When Look$mart went PFI and Yahoo followed, we all griped but went along. When they raised the ante from $199.00 to $299.00 and Yahoo followed, we all griped but went along. Now here they are changing the business model to this outlandish mode, and I believe they've managed to find the point where SEOs will not only gripe, but refuse outright to give them money. I hope Yahoo is paying attention.
Perhaps after the dust from the lawsuits clears and the bankruptcy is finished, SEs will realize that far from being some miniscule segment of their market, we represent a large portion of their revenue.
Perhaps they will even curtail their shabby treatment of us as an industry. Okay...prolly not. But we can hope, can't we?
You made some strong points.
BTW, where did that 8,000 sign ups number come from? You know they are playing with the numbers to get to that figure.
8,000 seems s significantly lower than I would have expected, especially when a percentage of the respondants may only be signing up for free clicks rather than offering new money.
Is my perception of this information wrong? Does anyone have an idea of what Overture's user base is?
mcg
Can anything be more appropriate?
If all LS wants to do is cater to these types of industries where $0.15/click is cheap (or $0.50/click once you factor out garbage searches), then they will not have a good sampling of sites from which to offer good search for, and will lose their partnerships with the larger portals who want all industries to be well represented.
It is really Thornley, I don't know why but I get a perverse pleasure from spelling the name wrong, I imagine it would really annoy him. :)
We don't like being patronised. We understand the service all too well, hence our outrage.
Attempts to re-spin the same story have simply made matters worse.
Kind regards,
Feeder
PS: We've spotted the plant as well
Hmmmm....I wonder if there is more to this.
If you paid $299 for a review, but no listing, as Looksmart claim, and the new product was advertised as an "upgrade"...then you were "upgraded" from what? A listing review? Or a directory listing?
DMOZ [dmoz.org] has a nice collection going. Wonder if they would qualify as non-commercial content in Zeal?
It seems they may have drastically under estimated the influence the "SEO" folks have on who spends money where.
As you may have seen from our recent press release, more than 8,000 customers responded to this new offering in the first month, exceeding our expectations."
I read this as 8000 customers responded. How many of the 8000 responses were positive to the new model is what I want to know :)
Okay, they ditched the directory business model and are now in the PPC business, my question is this; Have they told MSN?
I just did a search over there and still see the "WEB DIRECTORY SITES" moniker.
I'm pretty sure that MSN could use a bit of advice if they are trying to build a legitimate ISP/Portal..BE HONEST WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS.
To present these listing as anything less than paid advertising is simply more of the same corrupt behaviour that keeps them in court.
If you have information about a possible antitrust violation or potential anticompetitive activity, whether civil or criminal, please contact the Division's New Case Unit:
E-Mail
newcase.atr@usdoj.gov
Phone
1-888-647-3258 (toll-free in the U.S. and Canada)
or 1-202-307-2040
Mail
Antitrust Division - New Case Unit
601 D Street NW, Suite 10011
Washington, DC 20530
My traffic from LookSmart+MSN+Altavista+Netscape, was approx 5200 pageviews in January and 7200 in May.
From LookSmart alone it was 312 in January and 734 in May. ( Traffic from other sources was very stable.)
LookSmart's email suggests that my May traffic had been halted after the first day, and if I had paid an additional $2400 that month, I would have gotten an additional 16,000 pageviews. Does this seem plausible to anyone? If so, it would equal the traffic I get from a #2 Yahoo listing. I just don't believe it. (and I'd never pay $2400 a month, for my non-commercial site).
To undo the LookSmart wrong, to make things right, LookSmart should "review" my site again, and give it the permanent status I presumed I paid for initially. Maybe they can partly "save face" by broadening their definition of "non-commerical" to mean any site like mine, that isn't selling a product.
Could this possibly be considered "grand-fathering"?
If my site is the leader in it's industry, would that be an essential site?
If my site is a Fortune 500 Company, would that be essential?
If my site is competing against a Fortune 500 company, would that be essential?
If my company is a nationally recognized name, is that essential?
If I compete against a nationally recognized name, is that essential?
Which Civil Right sites would you consider to be essential?
Which religious sites would you consider to be essential?
What do you think about gay and lesbian sites, Evan?
What about environmental sites? Are they essential?
What about Spanish language sites? How did you decide which ones were best? What about Russian?
Do you use PageRank?
Again I ask, how do you discriminate?
Never paid a dime and indexed nicely.
Oops! Will probably be unindexed now.
Oh well, according to stats won't loss any sleep ... GOOGLEBOT, here Googlebot!
What a nice FREE bot you are!
I'm sorry to inform you that your site does not meet our guidlines.
Please make the necessary corrections and re-submit.
Thank you.
