Twelve Attributes Of Obviously Manipulative Directories, SEOmoz article Options

[AbleReach]

What Makes a Good Web Directory, and Why Google Penalized Dozens of Bad Ones

Rand Fishkin lists "Twelve Attributes of Obviously Manipulative Directories."

Some made me laugh

#8 Interlinking with Other Directories - If I can buy entry in your directory, along with three other directories for "one low price," I'd probably be better off burning those twenties for warmth (or, you know, trading them in for $19 Canadian).

#9 Common Popular Links - When I look through a directory's "most recent additions" and see a cosmetic surgeon, an Internet casino games site, a UK mortgage property and a Pennsylvania health insurance provider, I can be relatively assured that any decent, self-respecting search engine probably wants to yank the link value pretty quickly.

When you back off and think about the victims it's not so funny. Naive beginners who plunk down their link and a little cash don't know they're drinking from a poisoned well whose effects may linger longer than the memory of that $19 Canadian.

This post has been edited by AbleReach: Sep 20 2007, 10:47 AM

[rynert]

I am safe on all bar #7

7. Setting up "Premium" Sponsorships - When directories have a higher price you can pay for "extra links" or a higher placement on the page or assurance that you'll be linked to in every category, that's a decent sign that Google's spam team is going to come calling one of these days.

My bold.

I do that. Don't see that there is anything wrong there - it's no different to paying to advertise on the front page of a print paper, rather than page 23.

This post has been edited by rynert: Sep 20 2007, 02:00 PM

[A.N.Onym]

As a matter of fact, I second Rynert (before reading the article). If a directory is charging and the customer is repeatedly paying money for a sponsored position, then it is sending targeted traffic and customers. That's a sign of a good directory, IMHO.

[Wit]

I'm expecting Michael Vandemar to politely air his views on this 12-point list pretty soon

[AbleReach]

Michael Vandemar interviewed on 14th Colony

I know what you mean, Wit.

[Wit]

Oops there it is already: Why SEOmoz needs a FEO disclaimer.

{goes off to get another box of }

[randfish]

I long for the days when Michael Martinez was the one criticizing my writing.

This time - no paying attention to MV - it doesn't help anyone to respond to that sort of thing.

[AbleReach]

To be fair, Rand did title his post "What Makes a Good Web Directory."

Here are a few of my wishes for "good"

• Usability - should have the capacity to be absorbed in some useful way by humans
• Pages should have a focus
• Annotate links, and not with scraped bits
• Keep it current - no broken links

Any one of those should be quality markers if they're there, and red flags if they're not.

This post has been edited by AbleReach: Sep 21 2007, 01:32 PM

[Wit]

Personally I think ALL directories are crap. I really can't be arsed to submit my websites to them anymore. Even if they still hold value (link juice, maybe the odd direct visitor).

A good directory should just find my site (if it were any good) and list it. Dmoz tried that and failed because of the spam. Zeal did it quite well but got nuked. Alas.

[mvandemar]

This time - no paying attention to MV - it doesn't help anyone to respond to that sort of thing.

1) You replied on another forum 4 minutes after you made that post (others pointed that out to me, btw, I'm not the only one that pays attention to details, just so ya know).

2) What do you mean "this time"? You danced around actually replying last time, and then retreated altogether again. If you don't want to reply, then by all means don't. If you recall I actually advised you privately in email last time that if you weren't going to be straightforward then letting it die would probably be in your best interest.

The two posts are there for everyone to see and compare. Just let them speak for themselves.

-Michael

[AppleVenus]

I submit new sites/blogs to some directories, it's purely for links though, my traffic comes from other places.

AV

[Ruud]

You know, what caught my attention in that post was:

Ranks #1 for "alivedirectory.com" (so we know it's still in the index; and it's even got the sitelinks - keep that in mind next time someone tells you sitelinks are a sign of trust)

Those are two quite interesting pieces of information:

• Even though penalized they rank #1 for their domain name with their home page
• The sitelinks are intact

Everything else just sort of passed by me. Not to disrespect Rand's writing, far be it from me, but I lost interest in the directory topic a while ago

This post has been edited by Ruud: Sep 22 2007, 06:13 PM

[cre8pc]

Thread took on a new life...split off discussion to here.

[Wit]

Ok so this part is still about directories, right?

Well, nowadays if someone posts about a (new) directory on whichever SEO forum, my alarm bells immediately start to ring.

I've ranted about no-good dirs often in the past, especially about links pages that got so huge at some point that they had to be categorised and inadvertently got turned into directories. Ew. Directories attached to other websites (esp web shops) always get the thumbs-down from me. I just can't stand them.

[cre8pc]

Ok so this part is still about directories, right?

Yes. Before the moderators ground me for not being responsible, I figured I'd better get this thread back on topic

[JohnMu]

What I'd like to see is less of these made-for-SEO directories and more of the made-for-people directories.

When I go to a nice mall, most of the stores are similar is style (at least, that's how I like it). It would be neat to have something similar online. If I can find "my" directory, I can have a small collection of sites that match what I like to see, that have products in the style that I like to buy, that interact with me in the way that I enjoy. At the same time, if I have a shop I really like, perhaps I could check back and see which "directory" they're listed in and find similar sites for other things. Wouldn't that be neat?

Realistically, it just isn't going to happen, I know . There's just too much involved and too much money waiting to get collected by someone who can figure things out. Oh well.

Who here uses directories?

John

[AbleReach]

My feeling is that directories have a bad rap because so many of them got big, sloppy and deserted, while billing themselves as powerful and essential. Directories aren't by nature bad. Their legacy of putting BackRub manipulation before users is what stinks.

We're in transition.

[bwelford]

I don't use directories and I think they only really worked when we were all dealing with printed media before the Internet came along.

I'm very intrigued at the evolution of the Yellow Pages. When printed it was tough to use but was the only available tool. They've now gone online in Canada and really operate like a search engine. However the quality is particularly poor. Local Google does the task much better.

[AbleReach]

I think online yellow pages have a tremendous unmet potential.

I'm excited by the concept of sites like Yelp. I could very easily imagine a yelp.com/mytown with its own paid, human-edited directory, sort of like a local version of about.com meets blogging, with a really complete ad-supported, yellow-pages style directory on the side.

They're out there, sort of, but they're not quite there yet.

[Ron Carnell]

I don't use directories and I think they only really worked when we were all dealing with printed media before the Internet came along.

Less than ten years ago, Barry, the number one destination on the Internet was a directory called Yahoo.

Getting listed in Yahoo didn't raise your rank in any of the current search engines (Alta Vista and Excite were the big names around 1998), but it was almost guaranteed to drive LOTS of traffic. Indeed, the first several days to a week, when your newly listed site had a NEW icon and was listed at the top of your category, was the Nineties equivalent of being Dugg; servers were known to crash from the deluge of visitors. That initial flux didn't last long, but even without it, Yahoo drove steady traffic month after month to thousands of listed sites.

Google changed that, I think, first by providing a markedly better search experience and, second, by turning Yahoo (and every other major directory) into a dumping ground for greedy webmasters hungry for links. When Yahoo started charging for entry (excuse me, for review, I mean), the handwriting was on the wall.