So what is with Google telling people that submit to directories to remove their sites or suffer the wrath of google? Any other directory owners care to comment on the rash of people asking to be de-listed, and this BS that the google webmaster site is spouting? http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736 Thanks!
I know it does not, but I have questioned ever person that has asked to be delisted recently and this is the link that they all point to. Here is what some of these list removal requests I get look like.... They are hearing this somewhere... Where? You got me?
Buying and selling links has been bad for SEO with Google for a long time. If they spot you doing it they will give you a penalty.
This is old news and says nothing about directories. Buying links solely for pagerank has been a no no for years now.
Maybe it's just me but if G's able to identify evil paid links it would seem to be a much easier thing to simply ignore them. All this webmaster tools notification of bad links nonsense has done is get everyone confused and has given the more unscrupulous SEO folks another way to make money. Another thought is that some SEO person sent them an email like the one I received that said the link on your directory is bad. (Your's isn't the directory mentioned in the solicitation I was sent.) How easy would it be for someone to pick a general directory at random and simply email all of the site owners? "Oh I see you have a listing in ABC Directory. Did you know that directory has been targeted by Google as a site that...blah, blah, blah" You get the idea.
YMC is correct, Google is fostering a lot of ignorance here. If having "links" "paid" or otherwise were that bad, I could knock a competitor or anyone's site off the internet (from googles perspective anyway) any time I wanted by just adding a mass amount of links to their site. I can see nothing in Google Webmaster tools that would indicate that a link directly from my directory or anyone's for that matter (google, dmoz and or yahoo as well) has any negative affect on SERP's, or being indexed at all. The worst part about the ignorance surrounding the reading of Webmaster Tools is that fact that people think that when they see 1450 or so "links" that they are all coming from one place... That is simply not the case. An individual listing in a directory (unless you paid for a link on every page - and we do NOT sell footer links) is only going to show up ONCE, period... I'd really appreciate it if someone out there could direct me to a letter or link, or phone call (whatever) from google indicating 100% that my directory or anyone else's for that matter has a negative affect on their web site and that one link from a directory causes a site to be penalized or de-indexed... If you're getting warnings from Webmaster Tools, it is a collective combination of bad things that the individual may or may not be doing that is causing it, not one individual directory - that has been around BEFORE Google ever existed...
Unfortunately Jeremy, it would seem that G is promoting this bad links can hurt you concept. One of the SEO gurus wrote about a symposium where the G rep, when asked, suddenly became mute about backlinks as a form of attacking a competitor. Prior to then, G's party line was that they could not hurt you. They are definitely sending a mixed signal here. It's like they are working hand-in-hand with the SEO snake oil folks by freely handing them the bottles of oil.
Of course they are working hand in hand with some SEO folks; the MFA BH's that make them more money... Google is screwing advertisers just as much as the MFA people are. If you are better at making a crappy MFA landing page, you stay. If you generate the ad revenue, regardless of the content of the site, you stay. All one need do is a google search for just about anything to see the top 5 or so results in the top 10 of the first page are usually complete crap.