Can directories make a comeback after death?

As I was surfing the web as usual, after hitting a few links I found some directories down, the sites are not available anymore.

Now before anybody starts conflict with me about this, I want to point out that the directories in question were established for a few years, must have got a fair bit of traffic, yet the fact is they are no more. These directories have been offline for many months, and aren't likely to make a comeback after so long being offline.

They are/were:


Toxiclemon.co.uk
limeysearch.co.uk

now these went down for a reason, and they won't be the last I'm sure as Just35 went bust, and some talk of Jsearch making a comeback was short-lived, so is this the start of things to come and how to avoid this happening to directories in the future. Is it possible to make a comeback.

 

Directories are like every other site,if you let it drop then the site loose his credibility....

 

It didn't lose credibility - Toxic Lemon lost it's Toolbar Rank back in 2005. But I don't think the site's demise was about PR - much more than that.

Toxic Lemon was big at the time, new but the enevitable always happens once the effects of whatever campaign dies down. The thing with sites such as these is once the promotion stops and the ideas stop flowing, there's nothing more to shout about, and the fanfare moves on elsewhere.

Looks like it's not so easy to 'make it' after all...... Many have had a rough ride.

I guess once a directory is marked by Google, the domain becomes worthless - and cannot be used again to start something else.

 

I think many of the crappy directories these days are started with a .99 domain name, free templates, free script and free or near free hosting. If they can trick one person a month into paying $5 or $10 for a featured link then they can cruise at break-even forever. IMO that is the biggest problem in the industry, all these big spenders with $10 or $15 in their paypal accounts starting 10 directories at at time.

 

Yeah, agreed - but they are only fooling themselves hehe.

 

Yes google is not against directories or whatever some might think google is against every site-domain that violates his TOS or think that it violates his tos and chances to come back from some penalties is close to 0.

 

I don't know of any directory/search engine that went bust, then came back - except Looksmart (who went the niche route).

but they lost the game years ago when they messed up. Anyone know of any?

 

avivadirectory.com came up from a penalization....

 

Not only aviva but all (or most) of the directories owned by Jeff came up from penalization.

If I remember well umdum, apahcinc and sevenseek were also penalized...they are not anymore.

I reckon Jeff is a lucky guy, perhaps the only directory owner who managed to get his directories back on track.

I also reckon that Matt Cutts owns about 50% of AvivaDirectory & Network...lol...just kidding

 

you can make your directory links nofollow and submit a reinclusion request to google
it might come back.

 

I think its because either by luck Matt Cutts talked to him in his blog and focused on Jeffs penalisation or he purposely picked out a well known directory so that whatever advice he gave on reinclusion he knew it would be spread to other directory owners
(not that much of what he said helped anyone else anyway though)

 

I just can't figure out why Google can't be more transparent when it comes to why a penalization has occurred so folks could just have the option to fix it up or not.

 

cause then maybe webmasters would know not to do those specific things but would gie them a green light to try other things not mentioned
they want to create an atmosphere which keeps webmasters guessing as to what is bad for your site
I think they think that a lot of webmasters will be scared into following googles criteria even closer

 

They want to do the web as better as they can.They are clever guys.If you trying to do all things right in order not to get penalised sure your site or directory will be better for the users.