Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

LookSmart blames their sales staff and technology for their shabby results. Dave Hills, Looksmart CEO, says his sales staff wasn't "focused on the right categories" due to a lack of detailed query data. This could be true to a point--that is, they could have done better than they did, but they really should focus on the more important issue: the decling quality of their product. The quality of Looksmart's traffic is going downhill (or is it at the bottom of the hill already?) that's why they're losing advertisers left and right and cpc rates are dropping. You need to ditch your junky, fraud-laden partners and sacrifice some of that "traffic" for the sake of quality.

Looksmart was a goldmine back when they were providing results for MSN. It was great traffic that actually converted to sales! Since then, it's been a complete waste of advertising dollars for pretty much everyone I know. I realize it might be impossible to find another partner like MSN, but the way they are approaching this seems very short-sighted because they're not going to have any advertisers at all if they don't improve the quality of their distribution partners.