How useful are directories in practice? I have had little if any traffic from any directories despite making submissions to multiple directories in the past, including paid submissions. I could understand having a site in the major directories like DMoz, etc.. but aside from the main popular directories, 99% of them seem to be ineffective compared to other link building techniques.
For a new website, link building is mostly about having itself categorized in the right niche in the eyes of search engines. Thats why people submit to the relevant categories in good directories, buy related blog posts, get relevant link on blogrolls...try to get ranked on "relevancy"... If you have been building links, you must also know the difference between a good link, an OK link and a bad link? At some point in the past, one of my submitters (a brand new furniture company) mailed me a few weeks later saying that 100% of traffic he was receiving then came from my directory. I was surprised myself because my directory was newer then, the site wasnt featured nor did it remain on "What's New?" page longer than a couple of days... My point is I am definite that some directories do send traffic (even in its development phase) but directories are not meant for traffic. Directories are a strong helping hand for your site to even be 'glanced upon' by search engines...
You can increase your PR with high PR directories but don't expect to drive traffic from the directories. You will not get very high traffic from them.
I disagree, I think people should expect traffic from directories, directly or indirectly. Especially the major ones. I would not expect traffic from a newly created one, but I would disappointed if I paid all that money to get listed in Yahoo's dir and never saw any traffic from, but you usually get what you pay for.
Well, if the directory listing increases their site's PR and Google's algorithym indexes their site higher in the SERPs and in turn they get more traffic from organic searches then I'd say all is working well wouldn't you?
Care to explain how that actually happens when the PR on almost all categories in almost all directories is 0
The Yahoo! Directory is the second most referring site to one of my sites - lots of good traffic from that directory.
Directories are useless, because what is google? a big, huge, awesomely huge directory. otherwise known as a search engine
traffic from directories is very little but by submissions in many directories your site will be get higher PR, and higher positions in Google's search
OK, you got your 3 backlinks and then what? You need at least 30 of them to get RP 1, so... where the rest of them will come? fastreplies
Looks like a couple of free adds by the editorial staff, nothing that was submitted via paid inclusion. Quite possibly listed in those directories before they acquired the domain - reg shows 1 drop. Archive.org is experiencing some problems so I can't see how much the site had changed since the drop. All a guess and possibly incorrect.
if you list you site at relevant category in these directory its definitely help your site to frequent crawl and ranking.
maybe if the directory wasn't so broad as well......ive noticed alot cover such a broad range of websites that your link gets lost in it. (That's if yor chasing traffic from it)