Rating System Shows Quality of Directories Inbound Links

I am working on a rating system to show the quality of the inbound links of a directory.

I have given 1 point for each link from dir.yahoo.com (you get an average of ~15 with each submission), 30 points for each DMOZ link, 45 points for each link from an .edu site, and 67 points for each link from a .gov site.

dir.yahoo.com 1 (average of ~15 per sub)
dmoz.org 30
.edu 45
.ogv 67

Based on this point system here is the list of directories that have the best quality inbound links.

5810987 http://www.dmoz.org
5133260 http://dir.yahoo.com
475426 http://www.lii.org
113947 http://www.business.com
44671 http://sbd.bcentral.com
12490 http://www.whatuseek.com
9974 http://www.zeal.com
9397 http://www.cannylink.com
5824 http://www.123world.com
5340 http://www.americasbest.com
4911 http://www.joeant.com
4892 http://www.chiff.com
3357 http://www.mavicanet.com
2369 http://www.botw.org
1949 http://www.elib.org
1545 http://www.isedb.com
1227 http://www.rlrouse.com
1169 http://www.gimpsy.com
1110 http://www.goguides.org
1107 http://www.uncoverthenet.com
922 http://www.qango.com
922 http://www.azoos.com
777 http://www.bigall.com
691 http://www.azoos.com
672 http://www.exactseek.com
635 http://www.illumirate.com
629 http://www.web10.us
569 http://www.skaffe.com
525 http://www.businessseek.biz
495 http://www.platinax.co.uk/directory
450 http://www.informationoutpost.com
418 http://www.thisisouryear.com
405 http://www.abilogic.com
255 http://www.relmaxtop.com
250 http://www.sunsteam.com
202 http://www.alivedirectory.com
135 http://www.site-sift.com
120 http://www.wowdirectory.com
90 http://www.socengine.com
96 http://www.01webdirectory.com
75 http://www.sporge.com
75 http://www.yeandi.com
42 http://www.massivelinks.com

 

And this is to prove or to show ... what ?

 

Mariush: This shows the quality of the inbound links that each directory in the list has.

This list rates the directories decending for the quailty of their inbound links.

With many SEO experts holding that trust rank is now in effect the quality of the links a site or page has that you are considering getting a link from is important.

This rating system is quick way to show the quality of the inbound links a directory has.

 

Thanks, Bobmutch. I intend to check each one to see if I'm listed. If not, I'll be submitting. Nice research and "guesstimation" of the relative value of links from those directories.

 

Sorry bobmutch, i'm a little bit drunk right now. What I was trying to say is that I don't see what relevancy this has as long as those numbers are simply made up.

For example, I may not consider gov sites more valuable than edu sites, or maybe I won't choose numbers that far from each other.

Even if you alter a number by +/- 5 , your list is/can get screwed.

 

Jim4767:

>>>I intend to check each one to see if I'm listed... Nice research and "guesstimation" of the relative value of links from those directories.

Thanks! I am going to be doing the same and after I get this published I expect alot of other people will be doing that same.

I am writing up a Press Release that I will be doing as soon as I get the list up on my site.

mariush:

>>>What I was trying to say is that I don't see what relevancy this has as long as those numbers are simply made up.

The numbers are a ranking system to rank the value of all inbound links from dir.yahoo, dmoz.org, .edu and .gov sites. As we are dealing with 4 different types of links to come up with a rating system one has to determine the ranking juice relationshop between the differetn types of links and then create a muliplyer. This is what I did.

A Yahoo directory submission usually gets you 10 to 20 links. I went with ~15 on the average. I rated the ranking juice relationship between a link coming from site that has a dir.yahoo submission and a dmoz submission as the value of the dir.yahoo submission being 15 and the value of the dmoz link 30.

Then I rated the ranking juice relationship between a link comining from a site with a dmoz inbound and a .edu inbound as the .edu providing 1.5 times the ranking juice the dmoz link would.

I did the same thing with .edu and .gov links - I ranked a .gov has giving 1.5 times more ranking juice than a .edu.

I checked my numbers with Aaron Wall and Rand Fishkin and they both gave me valuable feed back on my proposed point system.

>>>For example, I may not consider gov sites more valuable than edu sites, or maybe I won't choose numbers that far from each other.

You may not but the SEO industry certially considers .gov links of more value that .edu links. I put that relationship between a .edu and .gov that the .gov provides 1.5 times more ranking juice.

>>>Even if you alter a number by +/- 5 , your list is/can get screwed.

This list has no claim to perfection. The point system is build on the knowledge base of SEO experts concerning the relationship values of the different types of links.

If you can offer a better system or even an idea for a better system I would be more than happy to hear about it. This point system was born out of a request from one of the divisions at standford.edu for a list of the top directories that a divisional Website should be added to. I can't think of a better way than the quality of inbound links each directory has. Can you?

 

I like the fact that somebody is at least trying to come up with an IBL ranking system. Perhaps this will spur on some debate and in the future allow Bob to create a more valuable list based on the feedback he receives.

In a world where most of the information is already re-packaged before you read it at least somebody is throwing their hat in the fire with an original idea.

Best of luck with your "link juice" list Bob.

Suggestions:

Do industry related "link juice" rankings. ie have a list for real estate, finance etc. with links sorted in order of "link juice" they provide.

This should help people get "industry specific, authority" links...

You could also factor in the directory homepage Page rank through a weighting system.

 

seowebguide: When I first started this project I was going to try to rank the directories them selves. I quickly found out there were just too many variables for me to even try to take that on.

So the next best thing was to just rank the inbound links. The main ones. dir.yahoo's, dmoz's, edu's and gov's.

With many SEO's experts holding that the TrustRank weight is being increased in the over all ranking weight Google is giving links, the ability to quickly view a rating that indicates the quantity of inbound dir.yahoo, dmoz, edu and gov links becomes more useful.

While there are other important factors such as domain or page age, and quality of outbound links, trying to integrate those all into a ranking system in my mind is going to be counter productive. The rating would be some what useless as the more factors you involve the less agreement you are going to get.

The rating system I have proposed doesn't rate directories themselves but only rates the quantity of their inbound links from dir.yahoo, dmoz, edu and gov. It is simple, deals with only 4 components so there is not a lot of room for argument and the discounting of the rating system. This will make the rating system more acceptable and more useful. It will also give us something to replace the PR rating system with. Anything is going to be better than the meaningless PR system.

I have not even taken into consideration the quality of different edu links. I am quite sure there is a huge difference between a standford.edu home page link and a link on a student’s home page from some unknown edu site.

But I feel like with the TrustRank weight getting an increasing share of the over all ranking weight links are given by Google, that this ranking system is a timely development.

I realize that not all directory owners are going to like this rating system as most directoires don't have any or many dir.yahoo, dmoz, edu and gov links. I didn't like it when I found out my beaconpost.com directory only got a rating of 22 either. But such is life.

 

Sad to see Platinax not on the list, but I think Bob's system is a very interesting and worth taking very seriously.

Hope you're going to keep that list updated, Bob - I've already been doing a few things that should see a significant change in my scoring.

 

I, Brian:

>>>Sad to see Platinax not on the list, but I think Bob's system is a very interesting and worth taking very seriously.

Sorry Brian, I missed it.

495 http://www.platinax.co.uk/directory

I would suggest a dir.yahoo submission also if you don't have one already.

If any one notices any directories that I have missed that have at least a DMOZ sub or better let me know.

>>>Hope you're going to keep that list updated, Bob - I've already been doing a few things that should see a significant change in my scoring.

I put the list on this page here.
http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html

My coders will be working on adding it to the db shortly and setting up some scraping code to keep the number of dir.yahoo, dmoz, edu, and gov links up to date.

 

Very illuminating! I checked through your list and found I'm listed in 17 of the directories, but not listed in 24 of them. Lots of work ahead.

 

Thanks for the revision, Bob.

 

Surprising to see the WOW Directory so low on the list.

 

dcristo:
>>>Surprising to see the WOW Directory so low on the list.

Yes I was also. Keep in mind that it is the inbound links of the directories that I am rating. Not the directories themselves.

 

My question is how many of these sites provide a free or recipical link.

 

If your lucky to get in to them, Dmoz and the Yahoo Dir offer free links.

 

Care to elaborate on what you consider to be ranking juice?

 

CedarCity:
>>>My question is how many of these sites provide a free or recipical link.
I am working on inputing this information. I will have that up and on this page tonight.

I didn't get to bed till 6am as I did an all nighter. I was back at it at 9:30a. I will be working hard at it late tonight also. I am publishing a Press Release on this rating system and contacting all my SEO blogger friends and asking them to blog on this list.

Here is where the price will be listed.
www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html

dcristo:
>>>If your lucky to get in to them, Dmoz and the Yahoo Dir offer free links.

Yahoo is only free for non-commercial.

CReed:
>>>Care to elaborate on what you consider to be ranking juice?

Ranking juice is the same as ranking weight. Ranking weight means the amount of ranking the Search Engines give an item.

We would say that Pagerank now as little or no ranking weight. We would say that on-page factors don't have alot of ranking weight. We would say that inbound links with the keyword in the anchor text has alot of ranking weight.

 

The reason for such top directories to be so successfull, is not just their incoming links but also their approach to taxonomy of web (how well they classify the information in web/directory), which is what i admire all about.

 

If by non-commercial you mean not directly selling a product on your website, then yeah. I was fortunate enough to recently have an adsense site (very good resource though) accepted. It's good to see Yahoo not having a bias to sites featuring adsense ads.