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.

At High Rankings Forum, a member is looking to submit to web directories and wonders if it's worthwhile to submit the entire optimized website title to the directory. Will it go over well?

Not usually, from what I've seen. In the directories that I've encountered, they're looking for the actual business name instead of an optimized title. In fact, many High Rankings forum members say the same thing. If you're looking to submit optimized titles (or keywords), you're seeking out "SEO friendly" directories, says moderator qwerty.

But if you end up going along the route of SEO friendly directories, whatever you do, don't submit the same "SEO terms" to every single directory. Diversify your search terms as much as possible. It gives you more of an advantage and looks a lot more natural.

Now, let's consider some basic rules for directories. This should be pretty much self-explanatory but may be helpful to some. First, make sure that your directory is indexed by Google. It's not worth the effort to get yourself submitted to a directory that won't actually help you. Second, make sure the directory has good quality sites. The directory shouldn't accept just any website. Third, check that the directory ranks for its own name. If it doesn't, it may have been penalized, and again, it's not worth the effort. Finally, check if the sites use a nofollow on links. That won't really help your SEO efforts if it does.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

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.

Yesterday, Rand Fishkin came out with a SEOmoz article on what makes a good web directory versus a bad one. Some of his points were that manipulative directories may have the following characteristics: are too broad, allows everyone access, uses manipulative link building, stuffs content to look natural, interlinks with other directories, and allows link bidding.

Cre8asite Forums members dissected this post and gave their $0.02 on Rand's take.

For example, Rand says that premium sponsorships on directories is shady practice. But some forum members do that.

it's no different to paying to advertise on the front page of a print paper, rather than page 23.

Other members agree with this sentiment.

I believe that's pretty much the only criticism they have on Rand's points. There also is a slight reaction in the blogosphere. Overall, Rand's article has a good direction, however, and I suggest you give it a read.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

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.

A WebmasterWorld thread talks about how they noticed how the Yahoo! Directory pages are showing a PageRank score that is typically lower than what they showed in the past.

A member says based on that, "Looks like that $300 link was worthless."

As you know, it cost $299 per year to get reviewed to be included in the Yahoo! Directory. So he feels that the $299 he spent is not worth anything because the page with the link has a low PageRank.

Forum moderator, martinibuster, responds that it is not that simple.

Passing the review process of the Yahoo directory says something positive about a website. The toolbar doesn't reflect that.

I agree. Google knows Yahoo! tries their best to only include quality sites within their directory. Even if a page in the Yahoo! Directory has a low PageRank, it doesn't fully represent the importance of such a link.

I may be going off on an edge right now, but I believe that a Wikipedia link, even though they are nofollowed, can be valuable. If not today, I think down the road.

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to links. It is not just about PageRank or if the link is going through a redirect or even if it is nofollowed. It also depends on the source.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

What would you say about a DMOZ directory that allowed you to vote and review the sites listed on the directory? A Cre8asite Forums thread discusses this question.

Bill Slawski says that DMOZ has a long way to go before it gets to that point:

Even if they added some simple touches, such as some portal features on the front page of the site - last added sites today, last added sites one year ago, featured categories of the day, etc., that would be nice.

lee.n3o agrees and adds that small tweaks could make it a more appealing directory:

Totally agree with Bill.... The structure seems to be there only focus, and some nifty little widgets or even a nice facelift (Including adding some font styles!!) might make a difference

I think it would be tricky business to integrate Web 2.0 voting capability to DMOZ. I've seen a good amount of gaming on other sites that allow for voting, and it would be something that would need to be policed rather carefully if such features were introduced. It would be possible for competitors to either promote their site way too heavily or to demote their competitors' sites if such functionality was integrated into the system. Perhaps it is good as-is with Bill's suggested solutions.

Discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

Update From Matt Cutts of Google:

It's definitely not related to the 302 on hotfroguk.co.uk though.

See Matts full explanation below.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has a thread about a site that appears to be hijacked within the Google results. First let me show you what I mean by being hijacked within the Google results.

A search on the site url, www.wenlockbasin.com, returns nothing from the site itself, but does return the directory hotfroguk.co.uk.

This is what a hijack may look like. Where you search for your domain, but someone else takes over the result.

Moderator, Ian Mcanerin, explains:

Hotfrog appears to link to websites using a redirection script issuing a 302 redirect. For new/low ranking sites, this can result in what is called a "hijack".

This can happen because a 302 actually tells a search engine that the original site is HotFrog and that it has been temporarily moved to your URL. Accordingly, the search engine shows the "original" if it has enough link juice.

This won't happen once you have enough links to outrank the page that it's on, but right now, it can be a real issue. It's one of the very few times when someone else can harm your site.

So he warns new site owners to "NEVER submit to a directory that uses 302 redirects for click tracking."

More on 302 Hijacks:
- Hijacking Google Results with 302 Redirects - Bait & Switch
- Google Tackles the 302 Redirect Issue
- Google Not Handling Redirects Correctly?
- Removing a 302 Hijacked Page from the Google Index
- and others, but some of these issues have been resolved.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Word comes from the forums that DMOZ is again accepting submissions for site inclusions in their directory.

On December 20, 2006, we reported Open Directory Project (DMOZ) Coming Back From the Dead with the reopening of the editor area.

Now submissions seem to be back. I tested it myself and it seems to be live.

Now making sure your site is listed is a completely other story. But at least now (1) editors are technically able to review sites and (2) site owners can technically submit sites.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

I should be back from my vacation this Wednesday, this is just a guest post since I have some time.

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.

You don't often see threads that discuss how to get more Web directories in the Google SERPs. Often, you see threads complaining about how there are too many Web directories cluttering up the results. A thread at WebmasterWorld named Keeping directories in Google discusses just that.

Duplicate content in my opinion is one of the major reasons many directories are not ranking well in the SERPs at Google. So what do the forum experts recommend?

(1) User submitted listings vs. editor submitted listings: Again, I do not believe there would be a difference between the two. As long as all listings are reviewed by humans and the listings are not outright spam, the content should be fine. If you simply scrap other directories or create a dmoz clone, then you can run into the duplicate content issue.

(2) Never allow for empty directories. Let users suggest categories if there are none that fit their listing's criteria. But do not publish empty categories.

(3) Having good category descriptions help with generating unique quality content. So if you are cloning an directory, then that might help with the duplicate content issues.

(4) Don't you just love those directories that have no true listings, but what you really see are AdSense ads or other 2nd or 3rd tier PPC ads.

(5) Be creative, allow users to rate listings, add comments and be interactive with the directory.

This thread is turning into something great, so check it out. (Hows that for a call to action)

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.

Web directories have been going up faster than new search engines these days. More and more webmasters are starting to realize the benefits these "directories" may have on the overall promotion of your site or your clients site. The great part is there are many good directories out there. Consider it the "Golden Age of Web Directories" with so many to choose from you could spend all day submitting to them.

Yet, with all these new directories, does this mean they actually represent quality sources to obtain a link from? I have seen a lot of specific niche directories and large directories go up recently, and honestly I have been pretty disappointed with the construction, quality, and usefulness of them. I wouldn't pay nor dare submit my link to some of them. Most to those that look like they took 15 minutes and a cup of coffee to set up.

A thread over at High Rankings talks about this, and the differences between a link farm and a web directory. One of the members questioned a new directory advertising members linking to members. They quickly uncovered for him that this "directory" was really a link farm who purpose was to inflate link popularity. Unlike other directories where valid links to sites are within related categories, sites that participate in link farming contain links to totally unrelated sites. These days the lines are getting more blurred with webmasters making changes to directories to resemble more "link farmish" type settings (more urls per page and less organization) with a web directory facelift. Packaged and then promoted via spam to anyone's email address they can find. You know the ones I am talking about, "I just added your link to my directory, would you...". Yeah those.

Jill makes a good point that helps define the difference between the two better, in that a reciprocal link is not the same as members linking to each other". There are several definations for a link farm, their use has evolved over time in order to reflect trends and ways to get around methods of detection. One member asks whether a "link farm" is called a "link farm" if a search engine never spiders it or can not crawl the site? I guess this is like if a tree fails in the forest and no one is around to here it, did it really fall? A link farm is a link farm regardless. The best thing to do regarding link farms is to avoid them all together, and be wise to tricks to disguise them as something else.

Continue reading Link Exchange Directory Project

Looking to build links the easy way? Submit yourself to directories. That is normally the first step in ones link building campaign. Then comes the other more advanced methods. So to get you started, visit DigitalPoint Forums on the directories (mostly free) that you can submit to and SEO Guys Forum.

The list includes:
http://www.dmoz.org/ (base page PR9)
http://dir.yahoo.com/ (base page PR9)
http://www.earthstation9.com (base page PR6, it uses frames, but it is SE friendly)
http://www.geniusfind.com/ (base page PR6)
http://www.re-quest.net/ (base PR6)
http://www.qango.com/ (base page PR6)
http://www.wowdirectory.com/ (base page PR6)
http://www.directoryarchives.com/ (base page PR6)
http://www.gimpsy.com/ (base page PR6)
http://www.smartlinks.org (base PR5)
http://www.josh.nu/ (base PR5)
http://www.blakkat.com/ (base PR5)
http://www.webworldindex.com/ (base page PR5)
http://www.yeandi.com/ (base page PR5)
http://www.turnpike.net/directory.phtml (base page PR5)
http://www.websavvy.cc/ (base page PR5)
http://www.webworldindex.com/ (base page PR5)
http://www.worldwidewub.org/ (base page PR4)
http://www.thedirectorysite.com/ (base page PR4)
http://www.seekon.com/ (base page PR3)

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"

Thanks to Fathom's posts at WMW on External Link Development and Internal Link Development, I was able to learn about a new tool. Not to downplay those two posts, both excellent posts and on par with all fathom's posts.

The new tool monitors your status of domains submitted to the DMOZ directory. Its free, unlike my SEO Count Google Rank Checker, and does an excellent job. I assume it just queries the dmoz application with the domain name in it. But it keeps everything in one place. Excellent tool.

Check out Seotie today! (nice ad huh?)

Google has said they don't give any extra weight for a link coming from DMOZ. That may be true, but a single listing in DMOZ can net hundreds of links from other websites, so indirectly it does have more value.

This thread shows how a single DMOZ link can give you 250+ links from different web sites.

Not really all that useful, but noticed DMOZ has a red button in it's categories now (bottom right), which shows thumbnails of the websites in the category.

It also looks like some coder over at Amazon or Alexa (same company, so whatever...) got bored and added a few minor things:

• Shows average time it takes to load a page
  
• Reviews were wiped out (although "star" ranking remains), and new reviews are now "Amazon" reviews instead of Alexa reviews
  
• Shows what percentage of sessions show popups
  
• Sccreenshot update form works now on non IE for Windows (now it's simply a link instead of a form)
  
• 3 month average traffic ranking seems to be updating more frequently than once a week on Monday
  

Speaking of Alexa... I got bored the other day and busted out the packet sniffer to see what it's actually doing when sending/receiving data to the Alexa servers, and it doesn't have a checksum (like the Google toolbar uses for getting PageRank). It does have a cookie which seems to be embedded, but it the lack of the cookie doesn't prevent you from getting data, which you can see by clicking here (you will need to view the source since it's XML... unless of course your browser supports XML natively).

And to answer the question on a lot of your minds, no... you can't spoof Alexa traffic by simply pulling the URL (I tested it already). Maybe it's the missing cookie data or something... and I'm sure if someone wanted to do it badly enough they could figure out how to, but I didn't really care about that part of it... I was mostly just curious about how it worked.