look is jumping for a number of reasons...

I believe LOOK will move much higher from these levels, for a number of reasons:

1. Looksmart recently launched over 180 vertical search sites. Whilst still in their embrioic stages, they are now gaining some good traction. Traffic to LOOK's owned network (excluding partner sites) is around half of the traffic to Ask Jeeves' network. Yet Ask Jeeves sold last year for US$1.85 bn. Compare LOOK's current market cap.

2. The CEO, David Hills, indicated strongly that recent revenue declines had bottomed out as from Q3 last year. I would be extremely surprised if there was not strong guidance for Q1 revenue.

3. In 2005, David Hills introduced a new revenue stream monetising the proprietary software systems they use internally every day. By the end of 2005 LOOK had signed licensing deals with Ask Jeeves, Viacom and the New York Times. Q4 was the first quarter to get the full benefit of these revenues.

4. LOOK recently annoucned a deal with Local.com. That deal will go live sometime in Q1, and will be likely to have an upward impact on Q1 guidance.

5. LOOK's new vertical sites are giving them several upward revenue drivers compared to the traditional search listings of other search engines.

6. Increasing traffic as the new vertical sites get established and indexed by the major search engines, leading to increasing advertiser clicks. LOOK's traffic DOUBLED between Q1 and Q3 2005

7. Increasing cpc (cost per click) as advertisers compete to pay a premium for the vertically segmented traffic. Traditional search engine listings are equivalent to ads in mainstream newspapers. Vertical search ads are equivalent to ads in specific niche magazines, and hence raise a higher premium.

8. Increasing amounts of advertisers as vertical search is still a new market, there are still relatively few places for advertisers to spend money on highly targetted segmented audiences online. This in turn will increase cpc as advertisers bid for space.

9. Increased exposure. LOOK now have 12 million pages of content out there on the web, all surrounded by extremely relevant ads.

10. LOOK recently launched their new banner ad platform. Q4 is the first quarter to include this revenue stream. 12 million pages of content display LOOK's banner ads in demographically segmented audiences.