Hello, i have a new directory and this days im submitting it to other directories. So i see many directories every day and also i see some facts ... some of them are funny some are sad. Lets talk a little ... 1. Ads by Google link bar as the top most thing I will asume that directory visitors are a) webmasters and b) regular people looking for something. If you are : a) The Google link bar is annoying , presenting "links" as Add Url. Im not gonna argue here, i think is pretty clear that webmasters dont click 2 times to get you adsense through google links. b) What interest will present for a regular visitor the Google link bar who contains links like Directory Submision, Add Url and stuff ? I even saw directories with pictures aligned to google links from the link bar. They are so sweet in their "innocence" but also annoying, you need to scrooooool till you find the real add url link. 2. Categories sorted by name on horizontal I hate this type of listing ! it makes my head spins 3. Going throgh 5 pages until you find the useful page Preparation Page -> Agreement Page -> Select Link type page -> Submit Page oh my god its more complicated than signing-up with paypal or whatever. The reason : "we are to spammed" yeah like microsoft will submit their site because of this ... 4. We are not accepting pages with PR under 3 This sounds to me like a real link farm ... you are not there for content, link count or whatever ... you are there for pagerank only. PR is a big part of directory reasons but not 100%. And when this request comes from a PR 0 directory is even more hilarious The funny final thing about this is that when you finally make it to PR 3 that directory dissapears ... 5. Vanilla empty PhpLd directories with featured links 20$ regular links 10$ This is something that i dont understand even i try so hard ... lets say you trick somebody for 20$ but if you manage to convince him to give you 20 buks for this better try a salesman career for more money .. you are to good to run a crap directory. 6. "Free Directories" but you need to go to a forum and post This is cool "our directory is free but if you dont want a reciprocal go and post somewhere and get back" ... yeah ... get real 7. Free links disabled till <insert future date> because of backlog This is a lame excuse ... why dont you say that your pocket is empty or you are to lazy to promote yourself or even to aprove the links in your directory. Or put off the radio button totally, its better than this. 8. The "Rules page" is longer than the "Latest Links" page Having some info about what you accept and not is ok. But having a 300 lines page with rules and 10 links aproved lately is like assuming that all webmasters that submit to your directory are retards or proffesional spammers. Thats all for now ... im sure i saw many more funny stuff past days but i vivited so many directories and i cant remember all. If you have such stuff to share please make us laugh And because im not finished with my directory submission list i will be back ...
9. If you are a directory owner add our directory to your directory and get back to us... This runs for the most stupid thing contest ... You add a link a their directory : you win they win but adding their site to oyur directory to be able to submit yours in they its ?!? So what ? you are the idiot of the month to work for them ? 10. Login must be at least 6 charachters I can login in digitalpoints with 5 chars but not in their directory ... btw why the hell you need to register an account to submit a link ... you dont need an account to suggest a site to google or msn ... i think i will pass this one
Well personally i find that a large number of directories are easy and quick to submit to, and you need to take into account the fact that these directories are a work in progress so a directory owner may not get everything correct straight away. From what i read on the forums here, the directory owners work their backsides off most of the time to keep us sweet, most are very open to suggestions, and usually correct problems as soon as they possibly can. I understand what your saying, some owners can have slightly unusual methods, but most are straight forward, and of course it is their directory after all, if they want to do it differently its up to the owner.
Not a bad post EvcRo. I have to agree with you, I think that having featured links in a directory is just to tacky, people are just destroying this industry. I don't understand why you would want featured listings on your site, mainly in the directory category, after all are you not trying to get people to sign up to your directory. Putting these guys at the top only allows the potential client to leave your directory and sign up else were. I can asure you that if your directory is good enough people will still pay $20, $30, or more get a spot in your directory even if it is not on the first page. People pay for quality, at least I do. Why do you think people pay the $299 to get into yahoo even if the page has pr of 0? Everyone knows that no one is going to go page 80 to buy a product, but because of yahoo's quality people pay it. That is what seperates good directories from the bad. Ask youself this question, would you pay $20, $30 for a listing in a directory that has page rank of 0, if not what makes you think other people will. Unless you know that your own pr is going to very high, and just on the home page but on all pages. Once again good post EvcRo, I'm adding your directory to ours you can view your listing here: http://www.index-it.net/directories/directories.html. Had to make some changes to this section, to many people where submitting all their directories at once. So we made the playing field even. There are still 3 spots available, but we are searching for some quality directories to place here which is why it is no longer an option on the free inclusion page.
I'm assuming my new directory, pr3plus.com is one of your targets for this one. This is a niche directory that I started based on feedback of users of my main directory. I don't see how having a niche like this makes it any more or less a "link farm" than any other niche directory. The niche in this case happens to be for people that are interested in SEO and PR. Yes my site is PR0, but it is brand new and unfortunately that is the way they all start out It won't be for long though. None of my directories will dissapear. I plan on keeping them running indefinitely. They are not pump and dump schemes for me, but part of my business model.
Not sure what you mean here? Do you mean something like having Business > Shopping > Widgets across the top of the page? Can you post an example please? Number 8, about the rules, is something I don't come across too often. But I do get the sense that some directory owners are losing their temper and professionalism, in the way they post their rules. Things like "If you make even one error, your submission will be zapped!", and "read the &^$£!! rules, scumbags!" in bold red. Okay, maybe not the last, but sometimes it seems like a close thing. What they don't seem to understand is that spammers do not stop to read. The rules are for the minority who have the patience and politeness to read and obey. So they need to be short and clear, and above all polite. Have to agree with you on all the other points.
It's not the only one, there are a number of directories out there in the "high PR" category. I never saw the point in this except from the directory owner's point of view (ie, avoiding bad neighbourhoods). It just shuts out non-established sites. PR really has little to do with quality. The other thing I wonder about this is what will happen if/when the PR system loses its usefulness? Google could shut it down tomorrow, or stop updating it for the next few years. All this sorting and excluding by PR depends a lot on one company, and it's a company that in some ways is in direct competition with directories.
SonicReducer : im not talking about your directory, i dont even remeber particular cases, submiting to 300 directories in 6 hours make me saw things but surely i dont and i dont want to remeber the names because doesn't matter. Back to the situation it doesnt look fair (and effective) to require a PR minimum in a new PR 0 directory. This is not the way to make your PR go up, letting others do the job. Obelia : This is a example of listing Arts Airplanes Actors Acucuc Akasjdhgasj Akjhsdf Basdas Badjahsj Ckasdah Ckasdjfshd etc .... Because of categories under main level ints hard to locate something without getting a dizzy spin Imagine that on columns And yes, when Google will shut down the PR (which, if you ask me, is appointless, abusable and meaningless thing) the world as we know will crumble and many people will cry (the ones with directories) and others will laugh (the ones who just sold theirs )
Actually, as a owner of several directories and afrequent directory submitter myself, I can say that all your complaints are valid and things I have tried to avoid. But, there is one complaint you had that might not be as bad as you think. Trust me on this. If you own a free directory, with some good promotion you could easily create a backlog that a one-man operation cannot possibly clear. Instead of having people wait months to get listed, I personally think that it is good that directory owners temporarily suspend free submissions. After all, if they decided to go paid and never to do free again, would you have the same problem?
I agree that PR doesn't mean quality, but it can be one way (of many) to judge quality. It would be rare to find a adsense template site that is a PR7. This type of niche is no different than a Travel directory that only accepts travel sites. It's a specific directory for a specific type of site. I agree though it does lool a little strange at first for a PR0 site to require PR, but that's how it works at first. I'm not sure what you mean about letting other do the job or your PR building. Outbound links are irrelanvent to a directories' PR, so you still have to do all the work yourself. Good discussion you have generated here.
For older, mostly specialized directories that don't offer free links via forums I'm willing to jump through various hoops to list a site. But I don't pursue a large number of directory listings. For directories that solicit listings if there is an impediment to a quick and easy submission I just close the window and move on to the next. There are just too many webmasters downloading and buying directory scripts for me to care. The critical issues that I do consider is: Is your topic/subject tree in any way distinctive? Did you just buy someone else's? Do you have unlikely categories like Supercomputing? Is there any sign that you gave any thought to the subcategories? If there is a sign of individuality and effort then I'm more likely to spend time. I've done fairly well without submitting to a single directory. This is something I've been trying lately. A month from now I may skip submitting to small, free general directories altogether. Richard
Rules every directory should identify, but too many don't... 1. Do you accept deep links? 2. How many characters can I use for a description? (My favorite ones are the ones that let me enter the characters and then the listing chops the extras off.) A note to those of you making the scripts... Could you please make it so that category suggestions can take place at the same time I submit my site? I wonder how many that require approval are actually followed up with a site submission by the person making the request? At least here with the forum I can keep track of the subscribed threads to check. Could you please make the graphical images to verify human submission READABLE? It took my 5 tries on one directory to finally get it right. Waste of my time and the directory owners bandwidth. OK, off my soapbox. To directory owners, thank you for providing this source of backlinks.
I had to smile at that give my own recent frustation. But I'm running the same software and must be presenting the same problem ... Richard
That's why i turned off that image generator in my directory. And because im to lazy to find another system to generate them And, in the last place, because it somehow annoyed me that phrase : "this is to prevent automated registration". So if yahoo.com comes and submit to my directory by "automated" registration it's a bad thing ? ofcourse is a joke but with some true smell...
As a long time blogger I'm just too lazy to take any chances of being hit with lots of spam. Oddly I found the text of one image on my directory on Google ... ? Richard
This is another issue : 11. Featured links : lifetime or 1 year What guarantees a featured link buyer has that his link will stay featured for 1 year in that directory ? Lets say the directory age is 1 week, there is NO guarantee that your featured link will stay up 1 year. It's like betting your 10$ that the person with the social number 12172736726256346253654 has blue eyes and its a female over 83 kilos. If the directory is an 1 year old maybe i can think that a life span of 1 year is possible. Another issue is with the owner responsability to keep the featured links. What if the directory is sold and the newowner decides to take that off. Verbal agreements in the forums ? All this talk from me just because i want to know : There are people who pay for featured links in newborn directories ? If yes please be kind and explain me your busines plan. Buying in older and established directories i understand but in 1 week directories ? Ofcourse, i see many directories having 25 featured links in some categories but i really think that those are traded links or just a case of the same owner who owns 5-10 directories. An older directory owner feedback would be nice
I'm with you now. I guess it's getting the right balance between having too much information to sort through on one page, and thus confusion, and having a directory that's too vertical. You don't want to be drilling down through subcategories forever. One thing that makes submitting to brand new directories so easy is that often it's one click, and you're there in the category you need to submit to.
This is one area in which I don't think you can get past assuming good will and honest intent (yeah, I know this is the web). Given the many links I backtrack to find parked domains I'm sure this will happen more and more with directories. Opening a directory is like opening a restaurant: most will fail. Is there a way to deal with this other than to spend money only with established directories? Richard
I actually like strongly vertical directories. But only if there's something in the parent category and subtopics: even if the webmaster has to add it himself. This is exactly the kind of thing Google likes to spider but it won't have any effect if it is just empty pages. Richard
I think there's an ideal range for directories to find, between having enough links per page and having too many sites in one large category. One thing I don't like to see is too much pagination, instead of splitting a category down into appropriate subcategories. For instance, the category Shopping followed by 200 or more numbered pages of unsorted shopping sites, at 50 sites or so per page. It's not just a matter of how many links per page, but how many links you have before you need to split the topic down into smaller categories. For me, the ideal range for a category is between 10 and 20 links. Any more than 20 links and it's time to put a few of those in a subcategory of their own. I guess a lot of directory owners must disagree with this, because I see a lot of them with many many more links per category. I don't know if this is for SEO reasons, lack of time, or because they don't share my views on the ideal ratio for usability purposes.