How to judge the quality of a web directory site?

Would be interesting to know how such third party sites know how much traffic a website is generating? or what calculations they use for their estimates.

Google Analytics requires website owners to add a bit of code to their websites to allow them to track accurate traffic.

 

Hello Jack. If you would like to add your site in a directory, first of all I suggest you to check if this directory is recognized as spam from Google. You can simply double check it: write the name of the directory on Google search box, to verify it appears on SERP, than do the same writing the url. If the directory will appear in the SERP both case, the site will probably not be spam for Google, and this is first step.
Second step: in order judge the quality of a web directory, I suggest you to check not only PR (I don not consider directories with PR 2 or less) but I recommend you to pay attention to domain authority, trust flow and citation flow. They are more important than PR to determinate quality of a directory (or other website) in my opinion. You can simply check them with an online tool such as majesticseo.com

 

I would only add, don't even check for PR as it could be really misguided. PR wasn't updated for several years now, and probably never would so some sites have really high PR (like 7 or 8) and when you visit those sites you see that site is really mess at this point. Site was probably looked and performed much better before when google assigned that hight PR to it. And now, if google would update PR probably wouldn't get even PR 2.
I've seen many of sites like that (not just directories).

 

Hi Mrtvac, I disagree when you say "PR wasn't updated for several years now". I've got many websites, and I check their PR every week. I can guarantee that PR has changed 3 times during last 18 monts ;-)
Nobody know when Google will update PR again, but I deduced they do it every 4-6 months...

 

Google last update to page rank was in December 2013. And, I'm quoting Google employee from 11/22/14:
"I wouldn't use PageRank or links as a metric. We've last updated PageRank more than a year ago (as far as I recall) and have no plans to do further updates. Think about what you want users to do on your site, and consider an appropriate metric for that. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ch/2011/06/beyond-pagerank-graduating-to.html"

You can find discussion here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/dKPZID4N3v0/discussion

 

You have to check the following:
1. Page authority
2. Page rank
3. Domain authority
4. Alexa rank
5. Domain age
6. Inbound links (.gov .edu)
7. Social metrics

 

1. See if its moderated? Yes = Good No = Stay away
2. Browse the directory and see the sites in hot niche category if you see reputable authority sites ranking having complete genuine contact info etc then its a good signal. If you see 1 spammy site in the directory, stay away!

3. See if it has PA/DA/CF/TF and if it has spammy links or not, if it has spammy links stay away.

These are the MAIN things to look out for!

 

Except for @silenthawk -- who has it right -- there is some old or irrelevant information in this thread. How about taking a look at it for yourself and deciding whether or not it looks like a quality directory? You don't need someone's metric to make that determination for you. I can tell you upfront that JoeAnt is moderated, as I have several sites listed there. Otherwise, take a look through its categories, particularly the category that you might be submitting your site to. Are the sites listed in that category relevant to the topic? What is their quality? If your site were to be listed in that category, would it be a good neighborhood or a bad neighborhood? If the directory does not have a category relevant to the topic of your site, I wouldn't submit to it, not that it would necessarily be a bad directory, but because the relevancy of any back-links you have are important. Like DMOZ, JoeAnt is a volunteer operated directory. If you volunteer as an editor, you can add your own site if you volunteer to edit the right category. Of course, any site that you add will be checked by a senior editor for appropriateness before it appears live in the directory, but there is no charge if you add it yourself. Otherwise, you can pay the submission fee and an editor will review it.

 

I assume you are saying "stay AWAY" if you see inbound .gov/.edu links?

 

Edu or gov links are high authority links.

 

And they are also the most abused. I suggest staying away from directories with inbound .edu/.gov because 99.9999% of the time the links are not legitimate.

 

Actually, going for directory submission relevant to your site is more beneficial. But, most of them are paid or want reciprocal links, so you have to shell out more money for them.

 

Wow, imagine that. Someone wanting to be compensated for providing a service. Yes, it is true that some directories do charge a nominal fee to list. The one's that do not are generally filled with more listings, dead sites, non-relevant and other useless garbage. There's really something to be said about paying for a service vs. blindly dropping links anywhere and everywhere at random.

 

I've never understood where people got the idea that someone should (1) buy a web directory script; (2) pay for dedicated hosting; (3) pay for modifications or design, or take the time to do it yourself; (4) set up a unique taxonomy; (5) spent countless hours of your own time, or pay others to seed each category with at least a few good sites; (6) maintain the directory daily, ridding it of spam, replacing bad links with good ones, adding new categories; and (7) do it all for free, knowing that no one will take your directory seriously if you so much as include an AdSense banner. It's truly beyond comprehension.

If I wanted to run a free directory, I'd still charge a dollar, because that alone would reduce the spam by about ninety percent.

 

Come on now.. You know everything on the Internet is FREE...

 

anyway, before sending to any directory, be totally sure. If you're wrong in your decision, you'll have to use the disavow tool in the future to solve the issue.

 

I just tell you one thing if you want to submit ur website link on web directory then must see the indexed page where you are submitting ur website url because web directories are best source of indexed ur link quickly.

Best of Luck