Search Engine News Blog Headline

3 October 2003

LookSmart Launches Bid For Placement

LookSmart has changed their search model once again. This time they've introduced an auction style, bid-for-placement service similar to that offered by their major competitor Overture. LookSmart is claiming the move sees it become the first search engine to offer paid inclusion and bid-for-placement in one integrated solution.

LookSmart Sponsored Listings will enable advertisers to bid for various search terms, resulting in their site listing to appear when persons type searches for those terms in the LookSmart network of sites. The higher the bid, the more chance their site listing will appear. For now at least, the existing fixed-price LookListings will apparently still exist in tandem with the new service.

The company will also be distributing the new Sponsored Listings across a network of partner sites including CNET, Road Runner, InfoSpace, LookSmart.com, Cox Internet, Mamma.com and Alltel. More information on the services is available here.

The move by LookSmart is clearly motivated by the huge success companies such as Overture have had in the bid-based search market and the projected growth of this market over the next several years.

But it is also a strong sign that their long term paid listings partnership with MSN will be coming to an end shortly.

With Google the clear industry leader, Microsoft gearing up to launch their own search engine and a combined Yahoo / Overture way already ahead of LookSmart in terms of the paid search market, it remains to be seen how well LookSmart can compete.

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