Looksmart Smartlinks
This is a trip down memory lane! Remember how Looksmart used to be a powerful force on the search engine scene? OK, we are talking about the 1990s here, but when Looksmart proudly rode the waves, they provided a way for webmasters to cash in on allowing their visitors to use their serach facility. Enter SmartLinks.
Alas, they don’t make those SmartLinks like they used to. Actually, they don’t make them at all anymore! But for all you nostalgic so and sos, this is how they worked. You would place some code on your web page (it was a form) that presented a search box. You could select a category, type in a search word and then search within that category for a dubject of your choosing. Looksmart would return results based on web pages it held in its index.
The smartlinks panel gave visitors instant access to anything, from the latest news, to their city’s weather. Everything on the Web was only one click away! You could even tailor the search panel to contain the type of information your visitor might be interested in. The best part was that webmasters earned money eache time someone used the SmartLinks panel. I think it was around $0.02 they paid webmasters every time the panel was used. Also, availability of SmartLinks was…free.
Ahhh…. those heady days
Alternatives To SmartLinks
There are a number of alternatives to Smartlinks that you can avail yourselves of today. For one, there is Google Adsense, which provides a similar search facility – of your site and the web. THere is also Chitika, too. They are by far the most popular and each pay out based on searches performed. Stay tuned for reviews of Google Adsense and Chitika!