Other Web Directories Archives

The iCrossing Blog posted screen captures of Google experimenting with green in the Google user interface. In addition, Google has changed from the yellow background color for their ads to green, within the Google Directory. iCrossing actually reported this two weeks ago but I I missed it until I spotted a Search Engine Watch Forums thread on his findings.

Here is a screen capture of a search on ipods at the Google Directory:

I see that green user interface myself, but I don't see the green look at a normal Google web search, like iCrossing showed for a search on car insurance.

Here is what I see:

Here is what iCrossing sees:

It may be that iCrossing has a browser cache issue from moving from the directory to web search? Maybe? I am not sure.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google has updated the PageRank bars within the Google Directory recently. The new update now matches the PageRank values of the Google Toolbar. For example, the Computers > Internet > Web Design and Development > Promotion > Weblogs category now shows my revised, penalized Toolbar PageRank score of a 4 and not a 7.

New Directory PageRank Score:

Old Directory PageRank Score:

The last time Google did a PageRank Directory update was in January and at that time, the PageRank score in the directory did not match the toolbar update from November or so. For history on that, start here and go back.

A WebmasterWorld thread notes that Google has also changes the scale of the Directory PageRank bars from a 0-7 to 0-10, this way it matches the Toolbar scale. Interesting, indeed.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Less than a month ago, entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki launched Alltop, a site that combines the best of the best in an easy to read format. Over at Sphinn, Kalena Jordan acknowledges that a number of known SEO blogs made it into the Alltop SEO category, Search Engine Journal, SEO by the Sea, SEO Book, Search Engine Land, Matt Cutts, Bruce Clay, Dave Naylor, SEO Scoop, Search Engine Guide, and others.

But that's not all. What you didn't notice is that Alltop has a social media category and there are a good number of blogs listed there, including mine. ;)

While the Sphinn discussion lauds Guy's efforts, others are probably a bit upset that they're not included. Tip: you can ask to be included at any time. I know that's how most of my colleagues were added.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Remember the Google Directory, yes it is powered by the Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org), well it has finally been updated.

After 19 months of having old data, Google finally pulled an RDF dump of the ODP directory as of August 7, 2007 this past Saturday.

The last time Google updated the Google Directory was in February 2006.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The popular Microsoft bCentral directory has announced they closed their doors to new business.

As of November 15, 2006 Microsoft will no longer accept new sign-ups for select Microsoft Online Small Business Services.

This means that those who were in the directory before, will continue to be there and be allowed to renew.

Matt McGee writes that going to the add url page, will then redirect you to the announcement page after clicking forward.

The WebmasterWorld community is a bit surprised and upset that the directory is going away.

But moderator stuntdubl said;

That was absolutely the worst directory to submit to in terms of usability - it was always in my top quality "bang for the buck" submission list though - shame they're doing away with it. It'd be nice to see something new and improved launched on the live domain.

Again, if you are already included, you should get renewal notices and ways to keep your current listings.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

ShoeMoney posted a thread at DigitalPoint forums named Zeal directory shutting down on March 28th. It is true, Zeal will be closing its doors on March 28th. The official announcement came from this discussion thread at Zeal. The post shows that Zeal's developers will be focusing on Furl, a social bookmarking site. Zeal was a very popular directory with many dedicated users, editors, fans and "Zealots."

There have been no replies to the post of this announcement. I checked the press release section, but it hasn't been updated since 03/18/03.

Thank you for being a part of the Zeal community and contributing your time and knowledge to the Directory. After trying to put the deserved resources behind Zeal, we have made the conscious decision to shut down Zeal.com. On March 28, 2006 Zeal will no longer be available. We are not selling Zeal.com and have no future plans for it at this time.

We think that avid Zeal users will appreciate the large, interesting and vital community at Furl.net (www.furl.net). Furl is an online book marking service that helps you save information that’s important to you, share it with others and see what others are saving and find important.

Member at our forums are questioning if this is really a valid statement from Zeal or a prank. It is hard to tell, since the about us pages are incredibly old and outdated. Is it as if they are already offline?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Found a good thread over at SEOchat asking what your top factor is in deciding to submit to a directory or not. There are thousands of directories out there and so many so that its necessary sometimes to take a critical look at the ones you submit to and even more so the ones you pay for. The member is looking at it from a singular issue, and see what people really value in a directory.

Some of the members are mentioining such things as directories with little creativeness in there design in that they use all the same templates and the category structure is terribly limited. DazzinDonna a moderator at SEOchat makes a good point that friendly urls are of major importance in the directory listings. In my own opinion subject specific or related directories are also a big plus in a decision I would make to submit or not. Secondly looking at the entire directory for an indication of "management" such that someone is actively submitting listing sites, categories are getting expanded, there is a live person behind the contact page, and that they are NOT including spam sites, other directories, or general trash into categories where they don't belong.

Some joke that the best directory is the free directory, or better yet there is no recip link required for inclusion. There is a good discussion about design and the visual appeal of a directory. While I do agree it is nice to see, it doesn't necessary mean the directory is always the best.

Continue reading Main Deciding Factor at SEOchat

There are tons of niche and general directories these days for everything on the sun, a recent thread on SEOchat examines how they will survive and some of the problems owners are facing when you happen to have too many links in your directory. Try managing over 500,000 and not link to a bad neighborhood?! One of the member who owns a very large directory is concerned linking to these bad neighborhoods and ways to find links that could do the site harm in the serps. Lots of good feedback in this post.

One of the first suggestions naturally was to use the "nofollow" tag in the link of the site. This would prevent the search engines from spidering these links, but then again it would be major PR hoarding which is notoriously unwise. Another member posts that instead of block the search engines from spidering these links you should allow them too, as your position in the serps will dramatically increase. I threw in the suggestion that you could get rid of categories that are "at risk" so to say for bad neighborhoods, or just scan those categories for those links. Another member who runs a large directory as well says to "If you really want to do something about it. Get yourself a free Google API key, then write a PHP script that will look for each domain or page in Googles SEPR via the 'site:' command. Just remember to have it run each day at night and not to pass your API query limit."

Continued Discussion at SEOchat

Cre8asite Forum added a new forum (or changed the name of an old forum, I forget) - Large-scale* Web Directories. The * stands for, This forum is for the discussion of large-scale web directories, such as DMOZ, Zeal, and similar. *A large-scale directory is one with more than 10 full-time (paid) editors, or more than 100 part-time or volunteer editors (note: self-submittors do not count as editors).

So you can expect directories such as Yahoo (paid), DMOZ (more then 100 volunteers) and other directories like those to be discussed in that forum.

To follow up on an old entry with a List of Mostly Free PageRank Passing Directories to Submit To, SEO Chat has an old thread that started back up again with an other list of directories, mostly free.

- joeant.com
- gimpsy.com
- jayde.com
- dmoz.org
- theallineed.com
- vlib.com
- illumirate.com
- xoron.com
- webworldindex.com
- aardvarkbusiness.com
- netinsert.com
- capterra.com
- thesoftwarenetwork.com
- buzzle.com
- qango.com
- bizweb.com
- chiff.com
- dc2net.com
- mavicanet.com
- searchtheweb.com
- turnpike.net
- websavvy.cc
- worldhot.com
- skaffe.com
- goguides.org
- qango.com
- linkopedia.com
- allestra.com
- americasbest.com
- azoos.com
- biz-directory.org
- mastersite.com
- pharos-search.com
- webworldindex.com
- business.com
- isedb.com
- seosites.com
- directory-pages.com
- spheri.ca
- directoryarchives.com
- lecktronix.com
- globalproducer.com
- wowdirectory.com
- berberber.com
- splendes.com
- ibsteam.net
- realestateabc.com
- redirectories.com
- reloproinc.com
- agentpreview.com
- reguideusa.com

Also see the Web Directories and Other Web Directories archives here (they should be fully populated in 1 week or so.

Reports at SEO Chat Forums that the Google Directory has been updated. Hard to know exactly which ODP index they are using. PageRank has reportedly updated in the index as well.

Peter Da Vanzo, a moderator at Cre8asite Forums and author of a funny reading Search Engine Blog said he is tired of waiting for dmoz and started his own directory named RubberStamped.org.

In a thread at Cre8asite, started by Peter, which he so elegantly named Blatant Self Promotion he asks the Cre8asite people for feedback. The basic information in the thread includes:
-$25.00 review fee
-two day turn-around
-anchor text friendly
-much promotion planned for 2005

Which he then adds to by explaining that the structure or layout isn't going to be much different then the competitors but:
-The content makes the difference. That will come. Already started, in fact.
-Ontology is a wonderful science. Often overlooked.
-The presence in the market is different. Some directories are able to market more effectively than others. It's not just about form, it's also about delivering real value to stakeholders, and building effective relationships. Anyone can open a shop. Not everyone can open a successful shop on the high street.

There are reports at WebmasterWorld of a Google Directory update. SteveB, a senior member at WebmasterWorld says;

Google directory seems to finally have been updated correctly.

Given the large amount of moving around that the serps are doing, with some of the main datacenters offline does this mean they might actually be......

Click4Choice offers a virtual, dynamic, person that talks to your directory visitor, when they hit your listing in the Click4Choice's directory. Here is an example of CW3 Web Hosting's Directory Landing Page.

The press release at PR Web reads "Click4Choice has chosen Oddcast, Inc to employ a virtual person to greet visitors as they browse the listings. Click4Choice is the first Directory to offer audio/visual listings which is extremely effective in getting a message out." Found by way of Cre8asite Forums.

To be honest, I was one of the first to sign up with the online yellow page giant, SuperPages.com. My experience...Very little transparency as to impressions, click throughs and leads captured. Why? Maybe because I was one of the first to sign up. Reports only came my way if I called and asked for them, there was no advertiser center for me to login to and view real time or even static reports. I based my data from my Web analytics reports that showed very little click throughs if any. Plus I maybe received two or three phone calls, all leading to nothing, over a year/year and a half time period. In addition, those phone calls did not convert, because I was not able to target specific keywords like you can with Overture, Google and natural search. This experience was very upsetting and had a negative ROI.

But, I am just one person, three other's reviewed SuperPages.com at a thread over at SEO Chat. One member claims "listings took 2 weeks to get approved and no traffic has been generated." An other member says "conversion rate is poor, cpc is a bit high, but we do pull sales. each sale has had a higher avg. ticket than other PPC sales as well." So there are always two or more sides to each story.

During my forum travels, I stumbled across a thread started by John Scott named Engineering a SE Algorithm. As many of you know, John recently launched a new directory named BlueFind, which I discuss here. Now John is on his way to release a new hybrid directory and search engine named SevenSeek.

If your interested in seeing what goes on in building a engineering a search engine algorithm, visit the thread at V7 Forums.

A thread at HighRankings named To B Or Not To B...central, Should I join bcentral?, asked the question - should I submit my site to http://sbd.bcentral.com/ or not?

The only issue people seemed to have with this program was that they recommended using an automated submission program. Most SEOs say this is one of the classic no-nos. Other's hate this program because it's by Microsoft and they require you to sign up for their "Microsoft .NET Passport" - ehh.

One post I would like to quote in its entirety, by mcanerin:

For what it's worth, I run linking campaigns for clients for both a standard SEO package and as a standalone service, so I'm very, very careful about the directories I link to.

I have a 15 point checklist for them and unless it passes all 15 points I don't go with them (actual list is confidential, but common sense - no black magic)

Anyway, I originally passed on this directory for the very reason that everyone else is concerned with - the automatic submissions issue. The directory passed every other test, but failed my "supports spammers" test

Recently I had a client ask me about it, and I told him why I had not automatically submitted to it, and he agreed, but felt that it still might be worth it. We discussed it for some time. This client is very web and business savvy, has a lot of traffic and conversions and I respect both his ethics and interest in his websites.

At the end of the day, we agreed that we should submit to the SBD IN SPITE of the automatic submissions. The directory has enough value that for him and many others it's worth it.

It's pretty bad when something that is clearly a trademark Microsoft "lets hold your hand" policy is considered good reason to avoid using the product.

Worse, they are teaching inexperienced website owners that automatic submissions are "ok", which is incredibly naive behavior for a company that wishes to take a lead in search. I know these are different departments, but geeze, this doesn't look good.

Currently I DO recommend submission, but only after I've educated the client as to what the issues are. I wish I could make a better recommendation based on the value of the directory itself, but I can't in good faith based on it's submission policy.

Maybe they don't get the concept that I would happily pay the same amount and skip the automatic submissions.

mcanerin, Ian, in fact started a new topic on this today at Search Engine Watch and named it MS Small Business Directory - SBD.

I have asked John Scott, the owner of BlueFind to send me some information on how his directory differs over the others. Here was his response:

Since launching BlueFind not even three months ago, it has become the main focus on my daily activities. The directory started off with a high PageRank – PR8, and it has attracted a lot of attention because of it. Good attention and bad. I’d like to address a few issues here.

Continue reading "The BlueFind Directory by John Scott"