Interesting. Wonder if the owners will start promoting again? No major link building but a little shout out to old clients and some advertising perhaps? I noticed all the bid directories are back too, zorg links that I used to own. And they rank for actual terms aswell - who remembers the "bidding web directory" competition that used to go on. The old sites are back in the top 10
The thing is, i think the penalisations made directory owners feel like promoting their directories was wrong, so what do they do. Once bitten, twice shy, i think even if they have the money to, they might be unsure whether to promote, for fear of more problems or simply wasted money. Plus you dont wanna spend money with people who called you names, suggested you were solely responsible and all that. If i was them id be p**sed off.
Promotion can naturally be acquired by maintaining the directory, serving the industry, helping the community and working continuously towards being different from other portals. I don't think any other form of promotion is required today in the directory industry.
nice to see jim, malcolm, an0n here. Just seeing their post after 3 years. Anyway what happened to wowdirectory.com?? it looks like dead, and i believe stoner used to run the site and been a popular directory.
looks like a high school reunion here, !!! old directory owners around! love that image An0n! ... and directory dump seems to be back on top too! ... beyond all the problems they've had, some of them were quite good, with quality in them, and LOADS of hard work put in there,... if it were me (and i had extra time/ and not falling sick ), i would definitely pick those up again! M.
Looks like Google has set a certain period for these sites. Anyway it's definitely a good news for all directory owners!
I think it is all about the user experience. If a "brand" directory is highly searched for, the directory will probably get back in serps for at least its business name. Remember the John Chow case study ? (Google it) Anyway, I know directories that are still penalised. Weird
many people agree that alive is nice directory and Chris is a nice guy include me. but I doubt Chris made any change so that its serp comes back coz alive looks same.
Maybe Gooogle figures if these directories hang around in good repair for 2 years that they have value?
I never had a SERP's issue with any of my directories, but I did have PR6 stripped on one some time back. Still no idea why and no explanation from Google. Has it hurt? No. Not that I can tell anyway. If anything it was a "selling point". I doubt it ever really affected the sites that listed. Not being indexed, now that would cause some issues. I really am quite optimistic that there will be a HUGE resurgence of directories and their influence on SERPs as search engines depend more an more on categorical organization rather than meta manipulation.