It seams that few debate that directories are the place to start when you begin the link building process. Some SEOs even get excited when talking about directories because it's so easy to get a "high quality" link. I've been thinking. Google's sole purpose is to give the user the most relevant search results possible. Few people seam to argue that. So why do they put any stock into a directory? Does anyone actually "use" a directory? To me they offer absolutely no purpose in 99% of cases that I've seen (from a visitor's standpoint...not a webmaster's standpoint). It seams to me that most directories do nothing but essentially charge for PR. In the end you have this pyramid type of scheme going where no substance is changing hands. It's all a fight for the illusion of PR. The directory site has nothing to offer, so they buy links from othe directories with good PR rankings. Then these directories sell links on their site and give PR to another site. Well, I just don't get it from a visitors standpoint. I don't get it from Google's standpoint. After seeing uncoverthenet.com drop to PR 0, I've been wondering what the future of directories is. It just seams that Google has a way of weeding out the "useless stuff" such as recip linking. What are your thoughts? Will we be penalized in 2 years for using directories? Directories "seam" fine now, but for how long will they last? Brandon Drury
Directories are great to increase link volume and PR, but I do not see them playing a large role in overall linking, as they should not be. For the cost and effort the are an effective addition to overall linking.
I think you are missing the whole point of directories. Proper directories are nothing to do with Google or page rank. They offer a listing of sites of a niche subject that have been vetted by human editors. They have a major advantage over search engines because their listings are 100% spam free. Get a good listing in a popular directory and you will receive quite a bit of traffic from it. BTW I'm not talking about the latest slew of spam directories that are nothing but an excuse to sell adsense but long established directories on a particular subject
What may seem like a "cheesy" directory today may be the Yahoo or DMOZ of tomorrow. There are quite a few success stories out there. Having a directory has many similarities to having a discussion forum. You can let people spam it, or you can do things to increase quality.
Do people actually use the Yahoo Directory and Dmoz? I don't mean to sound like I have an attitude, I just never had trouble finding information with the search engines or links from high quality sites. It just seams a little limiting. Even a large directory will only have a few hundred music sites, for example. These are not usually the best music sites. In fact, they are usually mediocre in most cases. Maybe a better question would be "When do you guys use directories for non-webmaster things? How often?" Maybe I'm missing out on a valuable resource, but that hasn't been my experience so far. If directories were valuable why did Yahoo switch to SLURP or whatever it's called? If I'm incorrect about anything, please set me in my place. I'm just trying to learn. Brandon
Well a few dayz ago i was searching for forums on certain topics and when I would search on google it wouldn't bring up any forums that i wanted. I wanted to search for a shopping forum. Then i typed shopping forum on dmoz and that worked better. Directories are a better source i believe, not saying I use it all the time. For example if your looking for a web hosting company, its better to go to a directory that lists 100 web hosting companies rather then a google search that lists hosting companies and most of the time most of the links aren't even their home page or its some article etc.
Niche market directory should have some potential. Many of my referring sites are such niche directories.
I think that anyone that uses just one type of method to find content on the web is limiting themselves (and perhaps causing themselves extra work). The more ways there are to find the information I want, the more effective I can be. Directories are just one of those ways.
I believe that directories do play a role in helping the Search Engines identify quality sites. I have submitted my sites to more directories than I can count. Although I wouldn't consider any of the sites spamy, I could probably divide them into high, medium and lower quality sites. I have noticed over time the high quality sites get listed more often. In many cases I don't even submit the lower quality sites because I know they don't meet the published quality guidelines of the directory. So, I am saying that if you submitted your sites to quality directories you would find something like this: High quality sites: would be approved about 90% of time Medium quality sites: would be approved about 60% of time Low quality sites: would be approved about 30% of time Spam sites: would be approved about 10% of time These acceptance numbers would probably go up a bit with some "paid directories", but not all. As a result, the higher the quality of a website the more links it would receive from directories.
It looks like G is penalizing and killing off PR for paid directories. They make it pretty clear that they don't like ppl selling links. Links are supposed to be "votes" according to them, and they don't want ppl making votes for themselves. They'll always be there though, but the big ones are gonna get burnt.
I have just through and updated the listings/PR in my listings of 600+ internet directories . From what I have found there are approximately 500-600 directories with PR and about 20 that have had their PR removed. Many of the 20 were free directories It is more likely that these sites were penalized for gaining links too fast - in an unatural way (high proportion of high PR links, site wide links, unrelated links). In Google's eyes, a 1 year old site should rarily reach a PR8 or high PR7without buying links big time.
I would say by next update they will begin to devalue websites that use it. It a way all it is saying is I will link to you if you link to me. The is nothing but a PR stunt. It says nothing about the content of the websites using it. IMO
That theory has been gaining supporters recently. Here is one way Google could do it. They could filter links from sites that have more than x% of their incoming links that are reciprocal. For example, they can discount incoming links for a site that has more than 40% of its links that are reciprocal.
In the last couple of days I have found a couple of more lesser directories that have had their PR set to 0. Many of these are really a sites "links directory", just a page of a related or unrelated site. I think Google's main motivation is probably to improve their search results. Imagine if you did a search for "legal advice" and your first 100 results were all directories and link pages, including Google comptetors link Yahoo and MSN. We would all have to agree that these results would be pretty crappy. Since there are so many directories out there (more every day), they have to do something. There are lots of reasons but this is probably the biggest and the high PR directories get the most attention.
Are we happy to see web directories everywhere in the net? I'll be sick to see them everywhere and it is the fact today. like many suggested, my gut feeling is that google will try to kill them off except for directories that provide true service like msn and yahoo directories....I like to see the response of microsoft if google decides to set small business directory to PR 0. Many directories like bluefind, uncoverthenet ...etc were victims of google slaughter...sad but I think more will die. our fate depends on our big brother - google.