I have recently started submitting some of my sites to directories. Previously I was contacting web admins and asking that they include me in their links or resources section. Based on advise in this forum I have camapaigns going to add hundreds of directory links. My gut feeling on directories is that at some point the search engines will devalue their links as links in a directory are a measure of grunt work to get yourself links rather than what links used to be. Links used to be (before 1995) a connection between scholarly works. One scholar was citing another so it was a valuable referal. Directory links are of much less value. Thoughts?
Information is information and with so much xml etc and connectivity protocols around for active for real time connectivity. Real time information is the 'sizzle" But there will always be a place for links as people continue to want more more data and information And I do not think links will be devalued by search engines ...............based on they want that information from the link anyway ........ if they miss the link some other search engine will want the link info anyway .....so they are unlikely to devalue original content links So until the internet is saturated with information (not likely this century or ever) links will have a major place to play in information and data distribution and networking
The connections you refer to, citations, are links between the scientific community. The thinking goes that the more citations a particular piece has, the more trusted, and generally accepted it must be. Each node (in this example, published scientific papers) is linked to another via citations. Those nodes with the most citations become hubs, and gain an authority status - rising to the top. This was the basic premise behind Google - map the topography of the Web, and calculate the importance of each node (webpage) based upon the number of citations (links) that the node has.
My question wasn't about links in general but the value of directories. The search engines will value good links and eventually they'll devalue links from directories set up to artificially inflate the value of the pages that it links out to. If they don't do something about the many directories for SEO, at some point people will say the search engines just give you search results based on "add your link for free" directories.