With Google stand on Directories - Is that worth running a Directory?

Yes its worth running a directory. You can start small and free. Its a lot of work. People get upset when you reject their sites. You do grow organically but is takes time, you build slowly.

There are other approaches, but sometimes they might get noticed.

Concentrate on quality and be honest, and customer focussed. Reject a lot.

The PR3 - 4 directories do grow into bigger directories. Positions change all the time, check the backlinks.

Niche directories may be the way forward.

 

Reject a lot is not practical. The powers that be say this is a measure of a directories quality. I say BS... If I get 50 quality submissions should I reject 20 of them to make someone with "power" happy?

I think not!

On the other hand, if you receive 50 crap submissions, I say reject them all...

 

I think it would be great to see less than 100 directories a month pop up, so I say, don't build any new ones unless you are prepared to build more than just a 'Gooogle juice bar'.

 

no, but many of the penalties given have been unfair. If you think that you cannot make a directory that is better and more unique than any of the ones hit, then don't build one.

 

I think that is a very reasonable comment, given that it will take a lot of hard work, time and money to produce a better product, than many of the sites that have been influenced by these effects

 

if we ever get to the point where people get that, there will no longer be the animosity from Google. Maybe from Minstrel, but that doesn't count

 

Come on now we know hes your Buddy ...

Both of you go at it like brothers..

 

I dont know about the others but Aviva and Alive are not good directories. Their content sucks. Its just filler which is used to try and justify the nonsense they called a marketing strategy. We have directories that aren't even a month old and they are already better directories than those two.

 

I never had a brother, just a little sis. Reading this, I'm glad I don't.

 

LOL! keep saying if that makes you happy
But how hard you try you will never be anywhere near the two of the legends[alive and aviva]!

 

heheheh you tell um..

 

It is your question - you should ask yourself, am I capable of developing a very nice web directory, with good content and user-friendly. Stop chasing Pagerank, and work on the other side, the better side, increase your SEO, work on your SERP rank and try to rank high on your keywords.

I do believe, for a matter that directories have a very nice future, it only depends on how you view it as - Sure, if you are going for PR, you should be a little worried, but letting things go the natural way, nobody would be able to stop you.

Web directories are here for users, the idea is to provide users a place where they can browse through links, and hopefully find what they are looking for, having a look at some web directories, I can see that there are people that have missed this factor, people have turned them into moneymaking web sites.

Try to be natural, and work on making a perfect web directory, that is optimized for the users, and you have nothing to be afraid of.

Meti

 

And I sincerely hope I never will. Why would I want to? It would be very silly to build for the purpose of getting penalised.

But I think you also need to recognise that if you are going to try and run it single handed that you cant hope to cover every activity or interest and that its necessary to earn recognition as a specialist in a field of your choice. What I am proposing is a general directory to cater to webmasters looking for back links with the possibility of future traffic that may be derived from a category servicing a niche market. This will also ensure that Google cannot ignore and devalue the resource you build.