1. How does Google knows the difference between a normal site and a directory site? 2. On what basis, it gives some directories good PR and some directory not? 3. How does Google differentiate between a good directory and link farm? I don't think Google has given any webmaster guidelines for directories. If anybody know please give the link. Google is telling not to provide more than 100 links in any page, but when a directory is doing the same, they are not punishing it. So how does the Google algorithm knows its a directory and not a normal site? This question is pondering in my mind for a long time. TIA for all who is answering this.
google has its terms and policies which are unseen nad no1 can tell exactly whats his logics. it sees the content first for the blogs or websites and how much links it has than it gives the PR to any site but directories which have good articles and it link building is seen by google.many directories do not rank well or dont have good PR,because they dont fulfill its terms and policies.you must submit your article to those directories which have high PR,so that your article also rank well. thanks
The major answer to your question for directories is time up traffic flow and search listing responding traffic flow.
1) the outbound to inbound link ratio would make it fairly obvious...but I don't think a directory necessarily has different rules than a website 2) PR is based on how good your backlinks are. If you want higher PR you have to do more link building. 3) There are several things they can look for... -linking to only quality sites...not spammy sites full of pop-up ads, bad neighborhoods, questionable content, etc -keeping things very organized with a good category structure...you don't want categories with dozens of pages of links -building quality backlinks helps establish trust with Google too
i have sometimes wondered this myself and vanster seems to give a reasonable answer. i think the structure of the site would be a big indicator of its purpose and the engines could read that easy enough... i don't know how representative this response would be but it seems to me from the info that i keep on the major paid directories, that many of the pr 5 and pr 6 directories are fairly well established, meaning dating back to 2003, 2004 etc. yahoo directory of course dates from over 10 years ago. perhaps a sign that domain age plays a role in pagerank too.