Why don't directory owners understand what spam is?

I believe in an "acceptable range" too. If 80% of the sites are in the correct category, provide great content and helpful, but 20% of the sites are borderline spammy, that would not be a whole lot different that what you find in google search results. The problem we have now is those numbers are so often reversed in directories leading to a very short term viability.

 

Of course. There has to be "acceptable" ranges. No resource is perfect. The larger they are the more difficult to maintain. Case in point is Google, and expired domains or spam ranking in the top placings. It's about activity and maintenance and once that stuff hits, removing it as quickly as possible.

DMOZ, as an example of magnitude. I could wander in and grab a sub category in shopping (I've done it somewhere previously), and literally of the 20 sites listed in that category 17 will be no longer relevant (expired domains, redirects to another sites or just a poor website). Does that then mean the entire DMOZ is useless. No, just that category.

So too with many directories, except (and I don't want them to use that above example as a defense), they have far less content than DMOZ and similar amounts of junk. If 1 or 2 listings in a directory of 10,000 are bad, who cares. It's when it gets into the 10s of 100s, in one category that it becomes a huge problem.

Even very good directories are getting into that unacceptable range. Just like Google is taking care of its backyard, directory owners need to take care of theirs. Whatever content is within control should be cleaned up.

Use this quiet period to make your content reflect the directory you want to be running.

 

Maybe all they think is money.

 

Maybe 20% wouldn't be acceptable, the difference with the search engines being that they have algorithms that can clean up a lot of mess quite quickly, with a directory not having that luxury its probably not ok for a directory to have more than a small percentage of a spammy problem because its probably not going to be dealt with at all as it would be time consuming so where google for example will continue to introduce new algorithms to combat their spam problems the directory will still have a stagnant collection of spam.

 

It's a good idea and one that i see most directories are looking at now but the work involved in that must be huge and I wonder if it will out a lot of people off.

 

While running a niche directory generally involves fewer categories and listings than a general one, I would think the strategy that I am using would work for any directory. I made a list of every category in a spreadsheet. (Mine's small enough that I can work from a paper list.) Whenever I add a new listing or have a bit of time, I audit one of the categories or sub-categories. That way, I'm auditing a handful of sites at a time rather than attempting the daunting task of going through them all at once.

Depending on what I find; I might edit the URL (when there's a note that the site has moved), edit the description, move the listing to another category or suspend it. (I suspend rather than delete in case I ever hear from the webmaster unless the domain has been dropped.) With a paid directory, it might also be a good idea to suspend and document why in case the site is only temporarily down.

I would guess that through the audit process, I've had to remove what amounts to 20% of my total accepted listings. Based on my experience, even a well-edited general directory could easily have substantially more than 20% bad listings and not even realize it.

 

That's what they all are thinking, but the problem is I'm sure that they end up not making much at all and that after a while they tend to abandon them.