forget about PR, penalized directories got hit with serps penalties as well. I cannot comment on your experiment as I don't know all the parameters involved. That said, I still believe that penalising a site based on the script used is non sense.
That's fine and I can accept that, given you probably haven't put forth much of an effort into things like this. I have, and it's even halted my own MODs to be set forth because I don't know what the outcome would be in the end. Don't get me wrong at all on this, I like phpLD. I always have, and I truly enjoy working with others with it. I just don't know if I'd prefer to invest time into MODs anymore because of the similarities being seen on the entire range of domains I've tested on. I'm actually at the point of being concerned with what I'm seeing. I mean, I sure as hell don't want to have to port my current directories over to something else. I couldn't afford the time on that. I can tell you that my next test will be something you'd be familiar with. It's with regards to what you're doing with: * City Guides: Albuquerque * - Atlanta * - Austin * - Baltimore * - Boston * - Chicago * - Cleveland * - Columbus * - Dallas * - Denver * - Detroit * - Houston * - Indianapolis * - Las Vegas * - Los Angeles * - Memphis * - Miami * - New York * - Philadelphia * - Phoenix * - Sacramento * - San Diego * - San Francisco * - Seattle * - Toronto * Virginia Beach * - Washington DC * enQuira Vertical: enQuira Blogs * - enQuira Money * - Limo Directory * - Blogs Directory * - enQuira Party * - Day Spa Directory * - Bars & Clubs * - Lottery Results also rakCha and rakCha Business and enQuira Inc Both of the .com's and .nets of those domains. kahuki.com would also know as well.
I am not sure I am following. anyhow If you need help with the experiment let me know (since my sites are involved).
Any chance of pointing me to the posts where he was wrong Mike? I'm going by second hand information here and won't comment unless I know the facts.
while I am not going to take sides of which script is being penaltised, I will say this for sure that alot of sites have been penaltised not because of which scripts they used, but because of their promotion techniques and the sources of their backlinks .... Johnchow.com (Knocked out uses a wordpress) Site-Sift - uses site-sift knocked out. Directorydump - Customized version of phpLD while dumped by google ... Alive Web Directory - uses phpLD - also knocked out BigWebLinks - Custom Bidding Directory script - Also knocked by Google. Zorg-Links - Phplinkbid script - Also knocked out by google Indexsniff - Another site-sift script - Knocked out Elegant Directory - Site-sift - Knocked out Wow Directory - uses a custom script knocked down as well and many many more Whereas Dirjournal - Still standing strong uses phpLD Madmouse.com - still standing strong using phpLD Iguides - still holding strong and it uses phpLD It is completely pointless to say that it is based on one script ... but I will rather say that it is based on the neighborhood the links were bought from.
Off topic but that John Chow bloke has a video on youtube of himself talking about human waste, its quite bizarre and i genuinely question the sanity of some webmasters at times.
I dont believe they are targetting a script either look at the sites penalised and as smub rightly says its more about promotion techniques, not having content/unique content on your site
Some reasons they might want to (not phpld specifically) : 1. The script is hacked and not patched (such as an older version that's no longer supported). 2. The script is inherently against their guidelines, for example a link-farm script or a bidding directory set up to auto-approve without moderation. Also, scripts that drain their resources by making multiple queries: they may decide, for instance, that they no longer want directories to query them for PR displays. 3. If it's widely abused by spammers, they might want to prevent certain pages from passing link love. For instance, forum member pages that aren't nofollowed. Perhaps not, but it's easy for a robot to determine that it is a directory, and to figure out how fresh many of its links are.
Even a scipt that is widely used by spammers can be used to build a useful and clean website. A script cannot be against their guidelines, the site built using that script can. They penalizes sites not scripts. next time we will hear they are penalizing php or mysql because they are used by many spammers to manipulate their serps.
Correct, which is why WordPress hasn't (yet) had an ass raping. However, I believe that any directory punished for using phpLD is being slapped for mass reciprocal linking, paid links, non-unique content, and most importantly, and most controversially, because of the way phpLD has been marketed. The script leaves itself open to attacks, and Google have taken advantage of that exploitation. Opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one and they're all shitty