LOOKs Can Be DeceivingWritten by Kalena Jordan
You may have heard that Looksmart Ltd have made some changes to their business model lately. In fact, Looksmart have made profit-driven decision to move Looksmart.com from a Paid Submission based directory to a Pay Per Click based directory. The first warning shot was fired on April 3rd, with an email to existing Looksmart customers announcing impending launch of Small Business Listings: "Based on feedback from customers like you, we've merged and enhanced benefits of our 'Submit' and 'Site Promote' products into one product called Small Business Listings." Hmm... we thought, smells like pay per click. Discussion boards and forums worldwide were rife with rumours, complaints and concerns. Feedback? What feedback? Nobody put their hand up to say they had asked for a PPC model. Next came machine gun fire in form of an email sent to existing Looksmart customers on April 12th: "LookSmart has launched Small Business Listings, our first pay-per-click product for small businesses. This new, improved product replaces both Submit and Site Promote... Your account has already been updated and is ready for you to log in. We've waived $49 per listing set-up fee. We'll give you $300 in free clicks per listing. Each month for next 20 months you'll receive a $15 credit per listing in your account - starting today." [I should take a moment to point out that currently, these changes apply to Looksmart.com only, not regional directory versions]. Meanwhile, new customers were asked to pay a $49 "set-up" fee and an initial account deposit of at least $150 towards future clicks. Existing Express Submit customers who paid $199 or $299 one-time submission fee discovered they were only entitled to a maximum of 100 clicks per month instead of unlimited number of clicks they were receiving under old model. Ouch. What's more, Looksmart demanded that these customers log-in and "activate" their accounts by July 11th (by entering their credit card details) in order to receive their "free" clicks. All types of conflicting assumptions and questions began appearing on forums and discussion boards. "What happens if I don't activate my account?", "Will existing listings stay same if you do nothing?", "Will my site be dropped if I don't activate", "What happens to my Looksmart listings on MSN?". So confusing and misleading was announcement from Looksmart that some people thought they were getting a huge bargain while others believed they were getting ripped off big time. To make matters worse, Terms of Service and FAQ's for new Small Business Listings on Looksmart site seemed to show conflicting information that changed each day we looked. But it took a couple of days for true deception to sink in. Once people began to log in and activate their accounts, it wasn't long before they started receiving "Listing Traffic Interruption" emails from Looksmart announcing their sites had already received 100 "free" clicks allocated as part of new deal and would consequently receive no more traffic for that month, unless they increased their monthly budget (in other words, agree to pay $0.15 per click for all additional visitors that month). One of my colleagues received this email within 8 hours of activating his account, which meant that he was previously receiving more than 300 clicks per DAY, let alone oh so generous 100 clicks per month that Looksmart were offering him as part of new deal. He worked out that he would need to add an additional $1,300 to his account each month, just to maintain level of traffic Looksmart were providing him under old system! Upgrade? I think not! Here are some interesting tid-bits I've discovered about new model: - Unlike regular Pay Per Click models such as Overture.com, Looksmart are not giving customers control over their bid amounts and also providing no way to regularly update their listing description without paying $49 each time for privilege.- Sites previously receiving an unlimited number of clicks per year via old system are now restricted to 1,200 clicks per year, unless they fork over more money. - The new system has a $15 per month minimum spend requirement. This means that if a listing fails to generate $15 worth of click revenue for LookSmart in a particular month, site will still be billed for that entire amount
| | PPC Bid Management Software ShowdownWritten by Kalena Jordan
If you’ve been keeping up with search engine industry lately, you’ll know that Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a fast growing trend. Nearly all of major search engines and directories have now integrated one type of PPC or another into their search results. At moment Overture.com (formerly GoTo) is clear leader in PPC field, with an estimated 90% of total PPC search market. But others such as FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting are slowly catching on. Overture currently has partnerships in place with Yahoo, AOL, AV, Lycos, Netscape, InfoSpace, MSN and Excite. People bid to purchase keywords from Overture and top 2 or 3 bids (called Premium Listings) appear on their partner sites when searches are conducted for those keywords. Most of time, Overture results appear above regular search results as "sponsored matches", so you can see how effective this type of campaign can be when used to draw targeted traffic to a web site. Whenever a viewer clicks on a sponsored listing, they are taken to advertiser’s site and advertiser is charged for click at rate determined by their bid on Overture. The main drawbacks to advertising on PPC engines to date have been: a) The quick exhaustion of funds due to large traffic volume b) The time consuming nature of bid rank analysis for multiple keywords c) The impact of bid gaps on cost-effectiveness (when your bid is more than it needs to be to maintain your target rank). When you are managing PPC campaigns for hundreds of keyword sets for multiple client sites, these problems are compounded. Fortunately, software has sprung up to help people manage their PPC campaigns and automate bidding process. We have reviewed eight of these Bid Management Software programs in our effort to find one right for our client campaigns and thought we’d share results with you: (Please note a more detailed version of this article, including a Software Features Chart can be viewed at our site here: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/PPC_Bid_Management_Software_Showdown.htm) 1. Tangare’s Pay Per Click Maximiser www.tangare.com The Pay Per Click Maximiser is a great product. A downloadable desktop program, no monthly fees, plenty of keywords and a good price for Standard edition (USD $199 for 500 keywords). It supports FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting in conjunction with Overture US & UK and allows user to determine bid update frequency. Other notable features include ability to export reports to Excel, HTML and email. My only real problem with this program is Interface, which tends to be confusing, (all that gray on gray) and not very intuitive. There is a help menu, but on first launch, it is not clear where to start or how to launch a new project. The "manage search terms" tab is also a little user unfriendly, but once you study help menu to determine how to set your rank targets and bid limits, you’re off and running. Their free trial download simulates bid optimization process, but is otherwise fully functional. Score 8/10 2. Click Patrol www.clickpatrol.com Click Patrol claim to be largest provider of automated Pay-Per-Click bid management services, but I can’t see any redeeming features that differentiate service from other providers. For starters, it is Internet based, so if you are security conscious, you may not like idea of handing over your Overture account login details to a third party provider. Then there are monthly fees, which are most expensive of all programs reviewed, ranging from $100 to $500, with an extra fee per keyword if you want your bids checked more often than every 24 hours. See Features Chart for details. They do support seven of major PPC engines and I hear their "Auto Position" feature works well to close price gaps, but there is no free trial of their system that I could find, only case studies and a screen capture. Score 5/10 3. Gapster www.did-it.com/gapster With release of their freeware bid optimization tool Gapster, Did-it had an opportunity to win hearts and capitalize on a thankful market. It sure sounded promising: free automatic bid monitoring & updating for 200 keywords on Overture US & UK, FindWhat and Kanoodle. Unfortunately, they chose to abuse privacy of their customers and win enemies for their trouble. As reported by Danny Sullivan in his latest Search Engine Update newsletter, beta users of Gapster allegedly had their Overture account login details published on Internet last month, care of one of Did-it’s own servers. The security breach was quickly corrected, but damage to Did-It’s reputation was already done. Mindful of this first impression clouding my judgment, I tried to download beta version to verify product itself and give them benefit of doubt. But at time of writing download was unavailable due to software undergoing an update. Let’s hope their updating their security protocols. Score 0/10 4. Save Per Click www.saveperclick.com Another Internet based program, Save Per Click supports more PPC engines than any of other products we reviewed, Nine in total, including some I’ve never heard of. They offer a free 7day trial, but you need to have an account already in place at one of supported PPC engines. This is a fairly straightforward program, but my major gripe is price and inability to pre-determine bid update frequency, although you CAN choose time of day. The monthly fee ranges from $19.95 to $89.95 for Standard edition (updates once a day) and $59.95 to $199.95 for Pro edition (updates once an hour). Price range is determined by number of keywords. See Features Chart for details. Score 6/10
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