No your posts are informative and raise many questions. The sites you mention have a problem with duplicate content being cached by the proxy servers, that's given. But the question that must be asked is why? If all the penalised sites have the same problem it would be very very depressing but if there are sites which have been penalised but do not have this proxy problem one must ask why anyone would pick out and attack a site that's already penalised. The other question I have is whether its not possible that a lot of directory masters regularly use proxy servers and whether this is not throwing everything out of kilter. If these directory masters are viewing the affected sites and Google is filing all this activity is it not possible that this is what is throwing up the odd results given that the sites in question are already in bad odour.
Well I am not going to be drawn into a debate about who could have done this and what their reasons were (if the proxy hacking does prove to be involved in this penalty, or even after the fact). Thus far the sites which do have this penalty and don't have the proxy problem are in the minority, whether that is because the various DC's are not showing the proxies yet, I am not using the right queries to find them or they just haven`t been proxy attacked remains to be seen. I have now set up a honey trap which is currently still ranking 1st in Google for a search on it's name. I am now in the process of proxy hacking it myself to see if any penalty is applied and if so, does the penalty effects match that of what we are seeing on the other penalised sites. I will post my findings good or bad when I have some data. As for your second question, I beleive I have addressed this in an earlier post as I am still at a loss to explain why anyone would have any reason to use a proxy to visit a web directory, let alone so many web directories using proxies.
workshop... Where do you stand on the nofollow tag? Are you in favor of it and do you believe it should be used?
We carry site wide links to phpld and IVS because they are quality resources we use extensively. But I think that's a question for them. If we get bulleted we will set up another site and drop them. What I don't like is blatant abuse. What about the practise of buying and selling of forum signatures? I find it confusing and don't believe its a particularly good idea.
So nofollow is ok for others to use but not for you at this time... /http://www.ecoguides.net/directory/enviroment/ I am sorry sir, but if you are a preacher, you must also be a practicer... And when/if you decide to use nofollow, how do you think your "customers" will react? Clean your house sir...
Do i have to define sitewide again ?? Quit fooling the world. You only have it on the homepage so add you carry homepage link. Mr. preacher, who have been in this business and is teaching others to run a quality directory if you rather focus on your directory it might get somewhere rather than staying in the garbage dump. O wait you can't do that because you are still teaching your Grand Master to run the directory right ?? I hope she is reading all this very carefully and if she is reading this ... than i hope lord have mercy for ur site.
Are you suggesting that all directories should use "no follow" tags. That would be really dumb. We work for Google and much like the editors at Dmoz we specialise in one area and go looking for useful sites and resources. The only difference being, is that each editor has an entire directory of their own to which web masters can submit their sites for a review. We are not selling links, we are selling reviews. There is nothing wrong with that and Google understands that the better we get, the better their results are going to be for it. Finally at some stage we will set up a directory of directories to pull all the individual sites together, each into their chosen niche and one hopes that besides feeding Google all the content we gather will actually offer the casual surfer some real value. Its a good example of what we call a symbiotic relationship in real life. Bidding directories on the other-hand should be "no follow" because they are not directories in the true sense of the term. They sell links and position. What was your question again? The links work, twit. Are you terminally stupid? There is no graphic and it will get fixed one day when I have nothing better to do. It was an install error. What's your point? So far we have had nothing but green from Google who I assume you are referring to as 'lord'. Our site works and anyone who submits now and who gets approved will be gaining a link that has long term value at a most reasonable knock down rate of $5 once off. What do you pay for on Aviva and what do you get?
I dont really use it much... But i have now updated biz-king and Sleek with the newest stuff and also cut the sitewides to only home page so lets see if that the reason... The way i see it is i didnt have any "High PR links" on any other site that should have got me penalized and if it was due to the "sitewides" then that problem has NOW been addressed so its just on them now. Lets hope for the best... thx malcolm
There are just too many directories ranking very high in the SERPs offering site-wides and blatantly selling them at that. Doubt that is the problem.
Well any "proxy issue" will soon be handled if that was the reason. If it was because off "another directory" that was penalized then that has been addressed as well... IF not then it was a "hand job" from someone with "no merits" behind it and a sad day for google and its way of thinking... If your going to punish a site then they should at least be for valid reasons. thx malcolm
so far many theories have been put forward lack of content bad quality sites listed proxy hijacking selling sitewide dofollow links buying links to inflate PR and SERPs I guess when these problems are sorted you could submit fo re-inclusion @ google, see if they manually review your site.
Lack of content ... dont think so "though i just added an additional 800 catagories" Bad sites... are being cleaned up by ME (personally) currently in directories that where free at one time as they have to now go into more specific categories. Proxies.... we are looking into that as i speak.. Sitewides..... null/void Issue addressed High PR links... never was an issue and irrelevant to our directories Doesn't leave much more room for penalties.. I dont see why i should have to ask for "reclusion" and not sure if "penalty" applies... But will give it a go regardless when im done rearranging links and deleting dead pages.. thx malcolm
-lack of content - doubt that is it, still lots of those single page sales letter type sites ranking, you would think gooogle would sink those eye-sores first. -bad quality sites listed - gooogle and all the other search engines index those same sites and some even rank well, so that would not make much sense. -proxy hijacking - could be. -selling sitewide dofollow links - I see tons of high rank directories and other sites that blatantly sell site-wides and they are still ranking very well. -buying links to inflate PR and SERPs - possibly, could be a trigger if you get PR7+ links they are manually verified, but I am guessing they don't have the resources for that. Just my educated opinions.
Thats all i can ask You know... Since i started upgrading King and Sleek i have run into many sites that where sitting on "parked pages" or are NO longer being indexed by google or totally changed thier content or type of site... Ive removed 200+ already dead pages ect ect that the validation never caught when i do my monthly checks. Is thier a mod or software or something available? I see this as a waste off space and also time for bots gathering data plus not good for any directory to show... thx malcolm
Nice to see you doing some changes. Will these 800 categories have listed sites? or will they be empty? What about additional content - articles, resources etc. I also agree with jay, how could google have the time or man power to manually review web directories? Surely they have better things to work on like spam blogs/viruses/illegal sites...
Will the catagories have sites listed? Well i suppose eventually they will... Articles and vids cost nothing to add/submit ... and soon im sure they will be loaded with content and sites in thier respective categories with the issues i mentioned (dead sites/parked pages/banned sites) above resolved. Everything takes Time and Patience.... thx malcolm
I didn't know we created a new religion where google is the lord. What is this religion called ?? If you think your site is anywhere near aviva than you are a fool. Aviva with a penalty gets (more traffic/business) than you do. the thing is if you ask me your site will never get a submission with a site which is owned by Syed Balkhi especially how it looks right now. When you have better things to do ?? I think rather than posting here (you should do that) because people usually post when they have nothing better to do and if you prioritize posting here rather than keeping the standards of your site than you are a bigger fool than i thought.
Why not try making a public stand on the issue of ethics within the industry? If it was a hand job which I suspect it was, it does show that there has been a radical change in thinking at Google. They whacked this forum and for reasons everyone is well aware of. As evidenced by smubs last post there are a few zunky nuts still hanging around but in the main its lot more subdued than in the past. DP is known for the opportunistic and the self serving interests of its members. Its also renowned for the way the members deal with anyone who dares to cross the line. That has changed. For how long is anyone's guess but for now it has changed. You are quite right despite our utilitarian look and lack of content none of our sites have been penalised and back links from our directories do get counted. One cant be too sure about Aviva these days, can we? You also seem to understand very little about the industry and how it really works. Directories are only good for the back links they offer web masters. That is until they gain recognition and acceptance and start drawing quality traffic. I know you are going to battle with the term quality but most people should get the real meaning. And yes Aviva has been recognised but its not the sort of recognition they or anyone else would want and I seriously doubt that they will ever draw any quality traffic. That leaves them with their a back link to sell and given their track record I would put my money on a review from Eco Guides because it has a long term future. Would you honestly suggest one should rather buy a high PR link from one of the most colourful characters that used to dominate both this forum and this industry? Thank you. Is this not the problem we are talking about? I like to think that despite being a corporate giant, warts an all, Google still remembers where it came from. It is an internet success story and if this penalisation is work of someone sitting in their garage late at night, all credit to them for a very bold move. No one knows what's coming next. Are they going to rub them out or let them off the hook? Are they waiting to see which way the cards fall or is it already work in progress? Whatever the true situation its a very very silly someone who tries to argue that there was never anything wrong with link (read PR) pimping. Finally to get back to my original question if every penalised site is not the victim of a proxy attack could this not be an attempt at damage control and could it not be self inflicted?