It's official Google has opened up a can of whoop ass on directories

I just blogged about this. Anybody have a theory?

Presumably these sites have either been buying or selling links?

 

Cm'on jg123, you can't be serious here? Of course high PR helps with submissions, how can you even go down that line when its absolutely clear that people use their bloated PR as enticement! Like putting a work in front of a fish, 99% of the time the unsuspecting little fishy will bite!

If I'm wrong why do people play so much importance on it when selling links?

 

I agree that a 'high' PR helps because many lay-persons only know or are focussed on that way of measurement. What I am saying is that just any 'PR' does not bring in the flood of untold riches.

I am speaking from experience, I have a PR5 directory that only got a couple of hand fulls worth of submissions last month. I never really promoted this directory too much, so eventhough it has a fairly good PR it still does not get too much traffic or submissions.

 

Tens of similar sites all suddenly stopping ranking for their own name one day is too much of a coincidence. I don't expect them to come back.

Everybody said text link ads would rank again that was months ago.

 

Nice blog added my 10c worth

 

Another one of those INTELLIGENT postings form the Smart and Clever who wants to outsmart Google with their SEO spammings and by the way I remember when I first started my directory they were the ones who spams the submissions of a long list of sites which I am now reviewing one by one and deleting it.

@The Phoenix
Be aware of those who spams the Solicitations and Announcement threads.

 

Most of us learn as we go along in this game. I own a directory and maybe I will be hit by the changing policy. Saying that it is only a bolt on to my other services, so it will not be too much of a problem.

I do agree with a change in policy, simply because it will level the playing field. If a directory is done right a good ranking will naturally follow.

After 6 weeks my directory had a PR of 3 many internal pages had a PR of 2, this was done by no spamming, in fact at the time I don't think I had done any deep linking to the directory.

I did get the feeling something was in the air as the PR update is long overdue. Imagine how much belly aching there is going to be if the PR update does not benefit all the new directory owners who have splashed out a small fortune on links.

 

As for PR not affecting the amount of submissions, I have to disagree with that. You will know when the manipulation is clearing up when people start advertising their directories based on the PR of the internal pages, not the homepage.

 

Good answer and I can understand from your perspective. But for the average web user (those who don't even own a website) surfing the net, PR is basically unknown to them. For those who never even used the Google toolbar may have no idea what PR really is. For them (the majority), the realistic value is 0. I even hear certain webmasters saying they don't even bother looking at PR and that PR shouldn't even be looked at as something to measure the quality of a site.

I can understand if Google penalizes a site for linking to excessive bad neighborhood sites, but not for selling paid reviews / listings.

And its funny because, those who chase high PR sometimes don't even go looking for paid directories. Their are tons of websites out there where people can chase for PR.

 

Exactly... look at almost every decent PR site on the net, in any niche. I bet 8 out of 10 sell ad space.. Seems like blogs or forums or other site types would be affected as well. I still find it hard to believe that Google is specifically targetting Directories. Again, I could be wrong..

Lance

 

I think its ridiculous for a site not to rank for its own name. In my eyes thats a search engine not doing its job properly. If this was to be permanent it would be nothing short of shambolic.

 

EVERYONE:

I don't operate any directories, but I thought you would be interested in knowing that almost all of my years-old, established sites are experiencing some funky shite.

One of my sites appeared in the top 3 results on Page 1 for a particular keyword (VERY competitive keyword with 71,000,000 current results) for at least 3 years straight. Suddenly, last week, my site was pushed back to Page 5. Strangely, this regression has happened ONLY for that particular keyword. All other keyword results are fine and unchanged.

I do not sell links at all. It makes no sense whatsoever.

WTF? is the obvious question.

 

Regardless of this disagreements it has thrown up some good conversation points today.

I bet a high percentage of PR chasers are directory owners.

 

Blogs, forums, MFA... those are all just easily identified.

If everybody is affected then I really don't see it as being such a big deal and don't believe Google would do that. If they aren't all affected then it begs the question... why? Blogs and forums must be way bigger offenders then these, if you consider a quality directory an offender of "PR chasing" or "Link Chasing"

Additionally, short of manually banning sites (which I don't see how Google could seriously get away with) isn't "PR chasing and link farming" of some sort inevitable? Even with an algorithm change? Aren't all algorithms inherently suspect to some sort of tactic?

Lance

 

I agree with you Lance green sent for a righton comment

 

All kinds of sites sell links, but directories are an easy target to go after.

...Since they state right on the site exactly how one obtains a link . (paypal $) etc.

When G started their 'report paid links'/ campaign, didn't cutts say there was no need to report directories? (why would there be, they are already quite easy to find)

 

It could be, but my argument is that there are a zillion other types of websites that take payments for links/advertising etc. These are just as easy to find. Why aren't they going after sites like http://www.reviewme.com/ ?

The beauty of computers is to AUTOMATE things... so if all kinds of sites sell links they are equally as easy to identify. Any Payment processor would show up just like PayPal does..
I just don't see Google manually omitting specific sites and not doing it through an algorithm . If they do it through an algorithm they are just spinning their wheels. They will eventually have no sites listed. It's an argument of infinite regression. As long as they have a search engine, people will WANT to rank higher. They can't do anything about that. (again, this is just my take, I could be wrong)

Lance

 

I certainly agree that people will always want to rank higher. And they will always find ways to do it.

As long as google bases their algo on links, all you have to do is look at succesfull sites, see what kind of links they are getting, and duplicate or obtain those too, as best you can...

I think SEO is kind of like a balloon filled with water. If google squeezes off one part of the balloon, another part bulges out.

 

Exactly! It's the nature of an algorithm by definition.. and there is no way that they can index the internet (which is growing exponentially) without one..
As long as Google uses an ALGORITHM... even if the switch to ranking a different way... it still needs to have a means to decide site A "ranks" higher than site B and so on...

Even if they are using some sort of smart/genetic algorithm, it still has rules applied to it.. The classic computer science example is IBM's Big Blue and chess algorithms.. even though they are "smart", they are still finite and adhere to certain rules...


Lance

 

I have been saying this for a long time. I feel that this is part of the language now uses about paid links. It seems that they may have penalised directories becuase they offer paid links and Google feels that this is competition for Adwords. I do hope this is not the case but it sure wouldn't surprise me..