I started a new directory a few days ago to see how it is to have a directory and I have created 1400 categories. How many categories do you have? Is it good to create as many categories as possible? Is 100 categories or so enough? What do ya think?
I actually think the more the better. One of the worst mistakes I see newer directory owners make is not taking time to make alot of categories. Having a few very general categories like Business, Internet, or Shopping becomes a complete mess very quickly once you have hundreds of sites submitted to those cats. Also, most submitters want to be on a page with few other listings. The only drawback, and you will hear some say it's bad, is that you will have some empty categories. Here's what you do on those categories that are not popular (such as subcats related to Arts, History, Science, Culture, etc). You fill these cats up with a few manual entries that you find. This has two pluses. One is that that category is not empty anymore, and two, the sites you find to list there will be high-quality sites.
The more traffic you are getting then the more you lose customers by not having the specific categories they want. Less is good to control traffic more though.
depends.. If you are makeing it for the human eye and browsing, 2 layers should be enough, to make it navigable. If you are makeing it seo specific and expect your users to come in on deep pages directly mainly from SE's you can go deeper, and pretty deep. For my directories I want to make the categories expand dynamicly as I get more listings. And when I have enough listings, I will make yet another layer and narrow down the categories
i have aroun 250 cats...but now that my direcotry is getting enough traffic i think it really needs more
My directory only has 606 categories right now, since it's just new and I don't want to have so many empty categories, but I add categories on it as I receive submissions that I feel should be in a separate category.
I prefer to have a good amount of categories in order to give the directory a more “full†look. I guess it all depends on what you are aiming at doing with your directory. In my directory I have about 250 categories.
I have 1200+ categories in http://www.allwebplaces.com which I plan to make my main directory. I add categories daily. Any sites that I manually add is above a PR5. but only 433 in http://www.allwebspiders.com which I don't plan on adding any more categories or making it a paid directory.
Yes I see you have categorized the MAIN CATEGORY "Health" (http://www.allwebplaces.com/health/) very well.
You have to see what your visitors want. IMO, having more categories is always good. When i submit my website to some directory, I always look for a niche cayegory / subcategory to submit to.
from 250 cats a week ago i'm now at 400 And i'll put more, as the need grows. But i think around 600 is a good number of cats to have...
Grow according to requirment.I would recommend using suggest category mod (if using phpld) to get better understanding of users need.
I started all mine with few categories, sub-categories. Then added (still add) as users suggest new ones, or if a submitted site does not really fit what is already on there. Let me see about this mod for phpld. Is it for ver 2 or the new paid version? \
even if you have new directory i think new categories won't have any bad impression on visitors. When i visit a directory and i find the exact category to where i can submit it makes good impression, but on the other hand if i am not able to find a category on "blogs" or "gardening" it really irritates me. I had some really bad experience with some directories -for example when submitting gardening site i check "home and garden" sub category only to find it contains most of furniture and shopping sub-categories, then i look at recreational sub category to find that it contains religious sub-categories, then i check hobby category and it contains sports sub category. I hope you understood what i mean. Make enough categories, visitors will submit and it will eventually fill up, if some sub-category is not filled even after long time then you can merge with related sub-category.