since the last time I owned a bid for position directory it has seemed that google has tightened its policy on paid links. are more people less willing to bid for links these days? Thanks.
it's might true although most of bidding web directories still keep pr4 from the latest updated, but the serp and pagerank of inner pages are penalty for paid links...
I would say the craze has slowed down a lot in recent months, but there are still many new ones being created each month. Create a site for users and not for search engines. If you want to make a site that makes money by breaking google's guidelines, don't come crying if you get penalised. I would know.
In the current form they are born with stunted growth, theres only so far you can go with them, to me they look like they "max out" too quickly. Most struggle to reach the max out stage with them.
No they are not dead, they are just flat the same as the directory industry as a whole. Mostly due to the fact that submitters are concerned about how Google is handling directories and they are waiting too see what the out come is from all of the recent penalties, etc.
not for all of us look at my european directory to see what i mean.. and as long for the serps if my directory is only 6 months old and ranks over ezilon and some other established european directories or europe directory what ever u choose in google then it means that have strong and good serps in my opinion...
No they are not dead. I got a PR3 bidding directory and in past week I got 3x~70$ value submissions and lots of 2-6$ value ones. Does that look that they're dead? Not at all for me. I'm still earning good
Not dead - I still bid for position on bidding directories. But I limit the number of directories i bid in because i'm scared google won't count them. So from a link-consumer perspective, I can say that I still am willing to pay for bid links, but will more closely budget how many I pay for overall.
They are still alive, you know, and they are less affected than general directories. Maybe the craze has been settled down a bit, but who knows what happens next.
I just blogged about this subject and was waiting for a template to be made before releasing it, but I guess now is as good a time as any because my mind hasn't changed, in fact been re-enforced. You can read it here if you like. I titled it the lottery of the bidding directory because after all that is exactly what they are. Footnote: There are no doubt one or two very worthy bidding directories out there with good intention of making them work long term, so to make it clear my blog is covering the largest percentage of them and the one's who attack me will be exactly those who the blog is aimed at.