Looksmart costs rising fast - anyone know why?

[zbhimani]

We have been sdvertising with Looksmart PPC since May 2003. Costs remained steady at $50-$100 a month.....until a couple of months ago. They climbed to $135, then $313, then $470 in consecutive months. I visited the web site, but cannot find much information about exactly where these ads are being shown. It is something that was set up by my predecessor,, and since costs were so minimal I never spent the time to look at it (until it started taking bigger bites out of my budget).
So my questions are:
1. Has anyone else noticed this drastic rise in cost this last 3 months, or is it just me?
2. Does anyone know why it has increased (are they supplying to additional search engines)?
3. Should I consider click-fraud?
4. Anyone have any opinion on whether Looksmart is worth it.
Thanks for any advice you can give

[robwatts]

Negative view from way back

http://www.traffick.com/print.asp?aID=53

I haven't used them since their decision to paint a joke nose and glasses on the Mona Lisa all the time insisting that their patrons would love it, and see it for the improvement it never was.

Maybe someone has a different view.

>1. Has anyone else noticed this drastic rise in cost this last 3 months, or is it just me?

Can't help on this one.


>2. Does anyone know why it has increased (are they supplying to additional search engines)?

Im not aware of any new distribution deals, have you seen a corresponding rise in traffic, are you getting a ROI?

>3. Should I consider click-fraud?

You should always always consider click fraud, and do periodic log trawls and look to identify dodgy looking patterns.

>4. Anyone have any opinion on whether Looksmart is worth it.

I think they suck personally, but thats neither here or there. If they deliver you traffic that converts then that should be all that matters.

[Webvisitor]

If you look at LookSmart's traffic as meassured by Alexa they have gained ground. FindArticles was picked up by Highbeam as a partner and the major S.Es carry articles from FindArticles. FindArticles traffic has enjoyed a major boost over the last 90 days.
LookSmart claims to have click fraud detection software deployed but who knows how good it is.

[tonerman]

My costs were going thru the roof also - but the traffic was worse! I agreed to $250 per month maximum without much thought, but within a month I was getting so many clicks they said I would need to up it to $750 to stay active all month. Now $750 as month for a lot of decent traffic isn't bad, but I decided to look into what I was getting and it was all trash in my opinion. A lot of sites with made up search engine names like greatsearches.com were generating a click every 5 to 10 minutes. All these clicks did not go one page past the home page. I got so fed up with it I closed my account at Looksmart and I am no longer listed there.

If that means I'm dead at MSN other than my overture PPC ads so be it. At least I get something for my money from Overture. When I closed the account they had a laundry list of reasons you could chose of about 6 items and "Poor quality traffic" was one of them. I'll live with Google and Yahoo for the moment if I hurt myself by getting rid of Looksmart. I think it is a three card monte stand at a carnival at the moment.

[seobook]

If that means I'm dead at MSN other than my overture PPC ads so be it.
MSN dumped LookSmart early this year.

[tonerman]

I that I saw that good piece of news somewhere else today, but it is nice to have it confirmed. Thanks. Given that fact I can't think of a single reason to use Looksmart. I can't think of any way to stop the garbage. Am I missing something?

[zbhimani]

but I decided to look into what I was getting and it was all trash in my opinion. A lot of sites with made up search engine names like greatsearches.com were generating a click every 5 to 10 minutes.

How do you find out where the clicks are coming from? I can't see anything in the reporting that will give me that?

[seobook]

How do you find out where the clicks are coming from? I can't see anything in the reporting that will give me that?
server logs or onsite tracking stuff maybe?

[tonerman]

How do you find out where the clicks are coming from? I can't see anything in the reporting that will give me that?

I have a lot of log analysis software but I often read raw low files. Just find out where your access.log file is located (usually in stats), download it and open it with a text editor. Look at lines where people first come in to your site. Here's example:



CPE-69-76-56-141.new.rr.com - - [18/Oct/2004:19:38:27 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 15937 "http://www.yesseek.com/searchresults.php?terms=printer+cartridges" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; {C3703801-22C4-4BB2-A4F1-A77E51B03D09})"

The above is one of the zillion clicks coming into my site from looksmart from yesseek.com. Ever heard of it? Nope? Me neither!