I hardly believe that any directory owner makes a good content for any users. Or to describe it in other words: A directory is exactly what a user DONT want to see when they entered a search term in google. They want a real site. not a bunch of links that they have to click them through.
I think you tend to find higher quality directories in niche area. It's a little harder to build a quality "general" directory but there are some. It is important to have a business model that promotes the adding of great sites, not just waiting for submissions.
Ummm...if you're against the concept, why do you offer Free Directory Hosting as one of the links in your sig?
There are good websites about, for example, music, and there are bad sites about music. There are good directories and there are bad ones.
Good point. And over time the best directories will likely be benefiting from the hard work they put into it, and the lower quality ones will not be as happy with the results. It is definitely important to think about quality of links. And I will say it again... Waiting for submissions is not good enough.
Sad to admit but there are directories that do not contain or deliver good contents to their visitors.
It may not be the site which they don't want to see but if a directory can provide them a choice of sites on the topic they want, I don't think it is bad
Agree, directories targetted at some niche area are very useful and the links they provided are usually better than search engines.
Specialized directories are more valuable and are indeed needed by regular user. And there is still a chance for webmasters to create specialized directories. <=== is already creating a new general directory
So true, directories targetted at some niche area are very useful. latehorn directories do make good content for users.
One (hopefully) useful example of a niche directory would be my free 'Directory of Article Directories'... which also makes for a good tongue twister. Now anyone can type in 'article directory' or 'article directories' in Google (and my site ranks #1 for the latter) but I update my directory by hand and it gives a fairly quick overview of what kind of article directory each site is (multiple, ecommerce, or for a specific niche). It also displays the Google PR for the page the article catregories (and usually links to the newest submitted articles) appear on - which is a decent barometer for which article directories are most popular (get the most traffic). And my resource page has a link to each article directory's 'submit' page - for those who want to submit articles - and a 'view' link to find articles on that site to use on your own website or newsletter, etc. So methinks having a directory like can be useful to those interested in either submitting or finding articles. One litmus test to determine whether a directory meets or surpasses Latehorn's initial critisism: "They want a real site. not a bunch of links that they have to click them through" is whether the directory provides exactly what can be found through a simple google search, or whether it goes above and beyond the information a search provides. And hopefully gives the searcher/visitor exactly what they're looking for. -Steve
I don't really know. I have had great success thus far, and have found that those that have listed have actually seen referrals coming from the KingBloom Directory. This is after all my ultimate goal, ie., the drive traffic to sites that list in the directory. It is well indexed, ranks fairly well for some good keywords, and gets a lot of traffic, not just SEO traffic. I was about as much of a fan of directories before I started it, as Shawn was a fan of forums. I had that "I'll never" attitude... But I did it, and it appears to be working quite well. Over a year later and still going with no end in sight. We have had such great success we wrote our own script which should be available soon. Place good content in a user friendly form on the internet and people will come!