“This is indeed a sad day for all of us; Webmasters, site owners, and Looksmart Searchable Directory”

Many of us have heard of the partnering of Looksmart with eZula. Some of us didn't expect it to come to fruition. I figured that Looksmart would eventually see this partnership as a dangerous courtship with the enemy. It has come to pass. The first report of the yellow (gold) links showing up came in today (12/08/01). This is indeed a sad day for all of us; Webmasters, site owners, and Looksmart.

When I first read about this partnership on the eZula Web site back in October of 2001, I jokingly posted in a forum that if Looksmart did continue with that plan, we can rename them to Lookdumb. Now, it seems very appropriate. The very sites that Looksmart is advertising on are the sites that pay Looksmart to list them. Talk about biting the hand that feeds them—feeding them cash for their pockets at $299 a crack per search engine listing.

You probably won't want to give them anymore advertising money because they use your money to advertise on your sites without compensating you. You will likely want to quit paying their listing fees to get visitors to your sites because they take your visitors away—again which is self defeating for you.

Some Keywords Looksmart is targeting:

• Tickets
• Hotel Reservation
• Car
• Computer
• Tickets
• Ticket
• Classifieds

There are likely other words, but these are the words we noticed being hijacked first-hand. If you have these words on your site, they may be linked to Looksmart search results featuring your competitors’ ads right at the top.

For instance, if your site sells tickets, the word tickets could get linked to a Looksmart search result with the keyword tickets being the term searched for. The top results on that page and the ads on Looksmart are targeting tickets making those results and ads your competition because they are targeting your market. You also loose the viewer to a competitor all thanks to Looksmart and eZula.

If you don't like Looksmart using your Web site to get free advertising space on it, send them an email telling them how you feel about it. If enough people send them an email about this problem, perhaps they will suspend further advertising through eZula. Otherwise you have no reason to advertise or list your sites with someone who turns around and takes back what you have paid for. I certainly won't pay someone to list me only to have them use my payment as a way to take my visitors back and my business.

Although we knew that this partnership was in the works, we give a special thanks to Patrick from SgtSearch.com for bringing these latest developments to our attention.