I stopped submitting to directories some time ago so I'm fine with that. No need of "relevant sites link to yours" is what makes me astonished. Can my brand new site rank well just because of the good onpage optimization? If links from relevant sites are not required anymore, I suppose links from totally unrelated sites are completely useless too? That means that link building won't be a factor in the SERP anymore?
hello... ohhhh you missed the new guidelines they fixed/added.. "Unfortunately due to economic reasons we have no other alternative but to kill off any competition hindering our progress in dominating the the webs advertising market." Actually here is the conversation... http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-chit-chat/browse_thread/thread/f943766fde76e87e laterz malcolm
I don't think we will see results of this removal in a short period, i believe it will take longer to see results.
Sites not running AdWords campaigns will be banned from Google too. We should delete this forum as it's not relevant anymore: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=25
Does this mean all the press releases and blog articles with links to my sites will no longer be valid? This is horrible!
hello... "Unfortunately due to economic reasons we have no other alternative but to kill off any competition hindering our progress in dominating the the webs advertising market." laterz malcolm
What was really changed? A "suggestion" to submit to yahoos directory that was removed from googles guidelines? thx malcolm
Using and handling links is still strength of Google, one of the reasons why they are still the best search engine. They focus more on natural link profile and quality of links which means they devalue links from directories, forum signatures, social bookmarks etc etc that can be easily "built by owner". Google doesn`t want you "build" links, they need "natural popularity". No need to encourage people for link building, so they deleted these recommendations.
According to the following blog article, a Google employee named John Mu made a comment about this change. To read the full article, go to http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018387.html
I asked on the Google Webmaster Help (On Google Groups) about why my rankings had gone down massively. The response was because most of my links were from directories, and I've seen my links in Google Webmaster Tools go down from around 20,000 to 5,000 whereas Yahoo still shows around 30,000 backlinks. Google seems to have discounted my links from directories.
Appreciate the link to see what was going on.. I took these 2 quotes from the google groups page from john Mu Quote #1 I wouldn't necessarily assume that we're devaluing Yahoo's links, I just think it's not one of the things we really need to recommend. If people think that a directory is going to bring them lots of visitors then it's obviously fine to get listed there. It's not something that people have to do though . What do you think - does it make sense? What else should we change / add / remove? Another person asked a question and he remarks Quote #2 This line was removed because we feel that you should not "force" other sites to link to yours. Obviously it's good that sites link to each other, it's fine to encourage that on your sites to link out and to make it easy for them to link to yours. However, I don't think we need to make it a part of the guidelines that you should "have other sites link to yours" -- they should be willing to do that on their own, it should be their decision not yours. I hope that makes sense. Ok so ... Would you support your competitors being on any off your pages or promoting their products? Thats all i got from it, but if anyone see's any hidden message then please share thx malcolm
I am not quite sure about google not recognizing directory backlinks. I agree that they have removed these points from their guidelines and it's shocker .. but I have still managed to get PR1 and PR2 for websites in last PR update with just directory submissions. Earlier I could get PR3 as well, but those days are gone
I don't think it's going to be useless. Remember that your traffic will still come from Yahoo and MSN. Directory listings and even paid listings are counted in their algo. So even if Google discount them, remember that Y and M included them. As long as Google doesn't PENALIZE, it's harmless to continue with it.