I am currently doing a low budget Google Adword campaign. In two weeks I have spent about 27 dollars and 11 cents a click on average....aprox 250 or so hits. This is over two weeks. I regularly look at my URL referral reports. Nothing out of the ordinary. I decided to try Looksmart. I figured Google gets more traffic than them and so I set a Looksmart budget at $20 for a month. That was burned up in a less than a a day or two. I check each day and it went from zero to no money left. And mostly in a day...and a 176 hits by blazehits.com. Before I looked up blazehits.com (which stopped hitting my sit with the exhaustion of my Looksmart dollars)...I emailed Looksmart something was fishy. They said it was because I used "inclusion" (into search results in my listings). Then they went on to tell me that they use "ePilot, Search123, Findology, GenieKnows, ABC Search, and Oversee.net. Some of our older partners include DogPile, Mamma.com, and CNET Search. Also keep in mind that our direct distribution partners also have their own partners who in turn have other partners of their own. Hence, the network is quite extensive and can drive a lot of broad traffic..." I emailed them and said "blazehits.com miraculously provided 176 hits in one day, far more than Google provides (over two weeks)... My distinct host hits did not change and the only notable referrer was blazehits.com...none or few of the affiliates they described. Then today I read an article about "Pay for Click Fraud" and Affiliate Fraud. Sounds familiar. I emailed Looksmart and basically want to know which affiliate got paid for 176 hits. I am no expert but I know enough to type in blazehits.com and can see that they gaurantee traffic. Someone used them. If Looksmart did not pay out any affiliate money than maybe they did. From now on I will stick to Google. I am sure they have their problems, but sending back an email to me that says "our direct distribution partners also have their own partners who in turn have other partners of their own..." means NO CONTROL. Even though it is a small amount, there is something about getting ripped off that makes want to hold someone accountable. LOOKSMART looks like LOOKSTHEOTHERWAY. JNT
yep, i had an account with looksmart for a couple years and $50 bucks would last about three weeks, i was also able to track good sales and then last year at the beginning of every month it would be gone in a day and no sales from it. i wrote looksmart, gave them the complete run down with stats and told them to cancel my account.