Exhibit 99.1

          LookSmart Strengthens Leadership Position in Search Targeted
                  Marketing with Acquisition of WiseNut, Inc.

         Next Generation Search Engine Technology to Improve Relevance,
                  Complete Search Solution Offering to Portals

San Francisco - March 12, 2002 - LookSmart (NASDAQ: LOOK, ASX: LOK), a global
leader in search targeted marketing, today announced that it has signed an
agreement to acquire privately held WiseNut, Inc., in a stock transaction valued
at $9.25 million. Voted CNET's Editor's Choice for "Up and Coming Search
Engines" in December 2001, WiseNut is a patent pending next generation search
engine technology that combines link analysis with contextual clustering.
LookSmart's financial guidance for Q1 2002 and full year 2002 remains unchanged.

With the integration of WiseNut's search technology, LookSmart's portal and ISP
partners will benefit by providing their users with a more relevant search
experience. LookSmart's customers, who list their sites in the directory, should
benefit from a higher return on marketing investment because more relevant
search results drive more qualified leads.

"As we integrate WiseNut's search technology over the next few quarters,
LookSmart will be able to offer our portal and ISP partners a full service
solution that includes a scalable billion document index infrastructure, next
generation search relevance and strong listings revenue," said Evan Thornley,
chairman and CEO of LookSmart. "By acquiring WiseNut, LookSmart becomes the
first company to have both high quality scalable search technology and strong
listings revenue generation. We believe this will position us to compete with
companies that have only one of these capabilities."

WiseNut was created by the co-founder and CTO of mySimon, Yeogirl Yun, and a top
tier team of engineers. In December 2001, CNET columnist John Eckhouse wrote:
"WiseNut uses a relevancy ranking system for its searches [that] measures both
the



relative importance of the pages it finds and the relevance of the pages within
a given search... The result? WiseNut works incredibly well."

"When we surveyed the landscape of new search technologies for the next
generation `better, faster, cheaper' architecture, WiseNut stood out," said
Peter Adams, chief technology officer of LookSmart. "We are excited by the
immediate opportunity to further scale WiseNut to search several billion
documents as one of the fastest, largest, and most relevant search engines on
the Internet."

"We're excited to be part of a winning combination with LookSmart to provide one
of the best search experiences on the Internet today," said Sung Yoon, CEO of
WiseNut. "We look forward to taking our efforts over the past two years to the
next level by working closely with LookSmart to integrate WiseNut's search
technology into LookSmart's search solution."

At the closing of the transaction, LookSmart will issue approximately 4.1
million shares of LookSmart common stock in exchange for all of the outstanding
stock and options of WiseNut, Inc.


                                                                 About LookSmart

LookSmart helps more than 80,000 customers harness the power of Search Targeted
Marketing to generate qualified leads. LookSmart commercial search listings
enable customers to reach 77 percent* or nearly four out of five U.S. Internet
users, through top portals and ISPs including Microsoft's MSN, AltaVista,
Netscape Netcenter, Prodigy, Juno, CNN.com, Road Runner, Cox Interactive Media,
InfoSpace (Go2Net, Dogpile, MetaCrawler), CNET's Search.com, Ask Jeeves and
search services such as Inktomi. As publisher of the world's most widely
distributed search directory, LookSmart is the only company that provides both
pay-for-placement and paid inclusion search listing platforms, to meet the needs
of medium and large advertisers. BTLookSmart, LookSmart's joint venture with BT,
deploys LookSmart directories and provides Search Targeted Marketing solutions
in the U.K., France and Asia-Pacific. LookSmart is based in San Francisco,
California, with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Montreal, London,
Melbourne and Sydney. For more information, please visit www.LookSmart.com.
                                                         -----------------

*Media Metrix November 2001 Digital Media Audience Ratings

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and
uncertainties. Any statements that refer to the closing of the proposed
acquisition, the successful integration of new technologies, increases in search
relevance or advertising returns, future financial expectations, or other
characterizations of future events or circumstances, including assumptions
underlying these projections, are forward-looking statements. The closing of the
proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including the
affirmative vote of WiseNut's shareholders, regulatory approvals, lack of
materially adverse changes



and other closing conditions. Our future results may differ from the
forward-looking statements contained herein due to various factors, such as the
potential failure to integrate WiseNut's technologies into our existing
technology and product offerings; the possibility that costs and time involved
in integration will be higher than predicted; the possible failure of businesses
to use our search engine offerings or targeted advertising products; the
possibility that advertising yields will not increase as a result of the
integrated technology; the possible failure to continue to expand the LookSmart
network and our traffic base at projected rates; the potential inability to
derive substantial revenue from new products and services including the
directory listings business; and the possibility of an unexpected increase in
costs, expenses or other factors contributing to our burn rate. In addition, you
should read the risk factors and other information in our Annual Report on Form
10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other periodic reports filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. Please note that we undertake no obligation
to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason.


Contact:
Liz Haggerty
(415) 348-7185
lhaggerty@looksmart.net
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