hi all, what do people thing the future for directories will be? There are thousands of poor quality directories now, but most only exist for link buidlign purposes only. How many internet users actually use them for finding website? Not many i would guess. Surely google will soon discount links from the majority of directories (dmoz, yahoo and the like excluded). j.
Some web directories are used quite a bit by actual users. I notice that Alive Directory, for example, gets a lot of traffic (especially from shopping related key phrase searches) from the search engines, and therefore visited by end-users looking for sites related to the search. Of course, directories have different goals. In my opinion, the directories that are cared for, handled well, and promoted will serve both webmasters and visitors well long into the future, and the ones that are not will over time loose interest from webmasters (and have never served visitors).
mystik hit the head on the nail. I agree though that not a whole lot of people find sites from directories; especially small ones.