I do not own a directory, but I buy lots of listings. While I don't really care about PR at all, I do want the category page that I'm spending money on to be cached. If it's not cached, it's probably not being crawled. I would say that at least half of the directories I consider, I walk away from because my cat is not cached. I don't know why so many directories are not being deep crawled. Maybe you guys know. But usually, when I get just 2 clicks from the home page, I find that page is not cached. The problem may be site structure. It may be Google crawler rules. But IMHO most directory owners need to do a better job at getting their pages crawled, indexed, and cached. That goes for some old respected directories too. Conversely, if your directory *is* deep crawled, I would market the heck out of that "all pages indexed and cached!". /*tom*/
Tom, I share a different opinion as a directory owner. Instead of focusing on categories, I've always believed that the real content is in the listing detail pages. This is part of the reason why we write a separate description for each listing - one for the category description and one for the listing detail page. I've seen category sub-pages not cached but the listing detail page was indexed in less then 24 hours. This happened today as a matter of fact. A newly approved listing appeared on a page 3 or something, but the listing detail page was indexed about eight hours after it was approved. And in a week or two, that same new listing will help to get the category cached again. In my opinion, there is always more we can do for our listings at VMOptions, but in general I'm pleased with the progress of our results. Especially for deep links, which it seems a lot of people like, what value does a category being cached have if the listing detail page is not? If I was the submitter, I would be more concerned about listing detail pages being cached. On listing detail pages there are no other outbound links and nothing to distract the visitor except whatever internal links the directory has. Of course not all directories have listing detail pages, but for those that do this should be an issue. In general, I can understand your frustrations. But please understand not all directories are designed the same way. As directory owners we can only do so much. And when our efforts still fall short, we can take criticism from submitters like yourself and work harder.