As we all know Google penguin update has affected a lot of websites . The effect on directories is mixed, some positive some negative, How has it affected your directory.
I mostly have directories that are for testing of new phpLD features, but none of them seem to have been impacted in terms of pagerank or traffic. That said, I don't have any directories that are a leading source of income for me. In talking with some other directory owners I can tell you there was an initial shock as people freaked out about especially the unnatural links. That seems to have faded and most people just had a small downward blip followed by a recovery. As I have reviewed a few sites now that received warning messages from google, in a large majority of cases, it was not directory links that represented the "bad" or "unnatural" links but other things like profile spamming, networked type links (same thing on many sites), and also pinged site analysis sites. But the directory links are still a worthwhile tool to SEO if they links are submitted properly to the correct category with a good title and description.
Penguin did not affect my directory directly (it is still well-indexed and ranking well for many terms) but it has affected the number of directory submissions I usually receive. In previous months, I can get paid submissions of up to 10 - 20 per day. Lately this has dropped drastically and I only get around 3 - 4 submissions per week. There was one particular week which I even had to go through without any submissions at all. Penguin has definitely affected my customer base.
Actually, for real directories, there isn't any impact at all. The "mixed" effect you speak of only pertains to weakly edited directories who have spam and are therefore not really directories at all. There is a very simple way for Penguin to not be an issue. It means the directory owner actually has to edit their listings. Of course, that means doing work. Something that too many people on this forum do not understand which is why they have 100 junk directories that Penguin smashed, when if they had 1 good directory, they'd be smiling right now Be wary of the FUD, and smoke and mirrors... Cos the talk is just talk.
Agreed. Lot of submitter spamming the descriptions with keywords and that is really bad I think, unique descriptions is a must if they want to get a good ranking (the link has value). I am not affected with Penguin.
From what I read on the net, Penguin really bring trouble for many webmasters. Is there any solution to repair from this update?