Back in mid 1990's we, like many others, were surprised to see the first attempts at Web indexes growing fast. Suddenlyt our non commercial sites were being spidered and put on indexes everywhere. Back then, we never really thought that our commercial site would be indexed as we didnt really think that the origines of the SE industry would want to index commercial sites for nothing. We submitted, and yes of course, they indexed it.

Im seeing indications that there is an increasing divide - for commercial sites, you have to pay, for non commercial, edu, gov sites you get in for free depending on your authority as assessed by alogo's such as Google. They are then inserted as back fill in commercial search engines, to increase their reach after being funded by the commercial sites.

Maybe Im just rambling... but I like to pick trends!
Are we seeing a move to where commercial sites cannot expect anymore a free spot on Google and some other authoritative free indexing databases. Google is making it difficult for commercial sites to get good rankings. cross linking for commercial sites is being looked at carefully.

Aren't commercial sites themselves making it difficult to get good rankings? This is the web. If companies want to talk to themselves (i.e. no outbound links), why would anyone grant them relevance? If what they want is to push advertorial content online, it seems natural they pay to get it seen.

Not an attack on you, but just a thought that corporate sites may need to adapt to the web if they want to leverage its effects (rather than expecting the web to bend over to their expectations: this is a shared space for commercial and non-commercial entities).
i agree with you absolutely otravers!

What I am saying is that the Web as a mechanism for sharing resources and views is what it was designed for. The underlying mechanisms of the Web were built just for that.

It was not built for multi-media brochures. One major cause of the dot com bust was companies with no understanding of the Web thinking there was a substantial and continuing enormous benefit for just that.

What I am saying is that the gap between the commercial web and the non-commercial web is widening and search engines are getting better at recognising each one. The commercial engines like the comemrcial sites because the pay. The non commercial engines like the non-commercial web becuase it lets them build up an informative data base that IS worth something. Google gets a look in for both.

Web sites SHOULD share links intelligently and sites that do should be rewarded for it, but in the end this may just evolve, not be forced. Clearly that is what the Web was designed for.
I wonder if using Google is only a temporary, stop-gap, measure until Looksmart can provide backfill from Wisenut?
Choosing Google is a no brainer. They get both consumer satisfaction and revenues. I wonder wich share of ad money Google leaves to partners.
I agree, it is a temp solution until they can get Wisenut filling all the back results and add another revenue stream from paid inclusion into Wisenut.
>share of ad money
I can't imagine Google ads get displayed on LS. I suppose rather LS paying Google , probably per search.
Google as temporary backfill, until Wisenut is ready to take off with more paid inclusion listings is my guess too.

Does anybody get traffic from LS directly?
>traffic from LS directly?

Not much compared to MSN.
But is Looksmart France independent? I wonder if all the Looksmarts will be moving to Wisenut?
But is Looksmart France independent? I wonder if all the Looksmarts will be moving to Wisenut?
It seems weird that LS haven't gone that way already. Wisenut was perfectly functional before LS bought it . slightly OT:Just took a look at Wisenut - what on earth happened to its front page?
Another one bites the dust. What a contrast to the talk here about Teoma should try grapping a slize of the european pie.

>Wisenut
Jaze, maybe it's because it's 3 in the morning here, but I can't see anything different there?
>but I can't see anything different there?

I neglected to mentioned that I hadn't been there for awhile - compared to what it was (if I remember correctly) it looks horrible - JMO

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