Anyone know exactly or nearly exact number how many directory website in both free and paid. Exclude sub domain web directory.
There would be over 25K directories. Most of them die out after one year of operation - but some good directories last longer and have been around for a long long time.
Supplementary question - Does anyone know the exact amount of websites are on the internet? *laugh* Sadly, the answer Samola is that lots are created daily, and wont last more than a year. These are often referred to as "fly-by-night" directories. They tend to be the ones that accept junk listings & in reality the term "directory" is used very loosely. In actual fact they aren't directories at all - they're link farms. Some idiot's even boost to hold over 2,000 of these, but they're an unwanted taint on an otherwise good industry. In short - there's lots of link farms, but only a small handful of directories.
Firstly theres no point in knowing this, and its not something you would want to keep track of, directories are constantly created, as are blogs, some dont even last a week. If your curious of the amount of competition, well theres a lot of it.
So many are created everyday and so many more are shut down every week, the number has become a constantly changing variable...However, if you're willing to disqualify recently bought high pr/dropped domain/spammy "directories" with little to no editorial standard, I believe the list will get shorter.
True, not including all the dropped domain junk, and the fact that many directory owners simply gave up, and that many are now less inclined to start a new one, i would imagine that the amount of real web directories is significatly smaller compared to 2 - 3 years ago. Its the constant junk released daily that is giving the illusion that the directory business is still massively popular to jump into. Aside from that, its cool if you do now own a directory at least a year old now and that was started properly, i think people will still appreciate those now and in the future.