The reason I gave Looksmart a 1 is because
They extort from their customers, treat their paying customers like a bag of rats, and slime, they care more about money then quality search results, They shut down all free ways to Looksmart, then they delist after enslaving for looksmart, and they are not about quality.
I believe quality is about the site not how much money a webmaster has to pay. There are really good high quality websites that are struggling to high rankings (I am struggling for rankings too), while low quality, and adult content sites find ways to seep to the top.
The reason I am writing this review is because I have been exploited. I have slaved away for GRUBS crawling system (My Own bandwidth we pay for and no thanks by Looksmart) and never get added to looksmart, I have to volunteer at Zeal and when I do they shut down Zeal. I get a discount coupon by Looksmart and they act like it's not a legal coupon and forced me to put in my Credit Card Number. I have a directory and am planning to ban looksmart, and wisenut from my directory since all they want to do is take advantage of me.
If looksmart can't treat their customers right, or provide better searches they will fall. The Customer is always right which made lots of businesses sucessful. I wanted to email looksmart about all the work I did for them and whats the use. I bet I will have to convert to pay, and be exploited.
And Zeal I never heard of a directory in my life that forces users to take a Quiz just to submit a site. Lots of people were struggling with the Zeal quiz, some cheated, and some tried to get someone who was in Zeal to add their site. Whats worse is they keep changing the rules I have been hearing so you have to take the stupid quiz again. Zeal does not care about us. They want us to get hooked so we pay loads of money. Thats not quality.