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Web Directories, Put Up Or Just Shut Up

Posted by Paul B | September 5, 2007 .

I’ve been getting involved (maybe a little too much) in some discussion over at John Chow’s place about web directories. It wasn’t all that long ago that I did a post about how ab-sol-ut-ely fricking useless they are in terms of any benefit they offer to webmasters. Well it appears as though thanks to the recent major slap on the face by Google to all worthless directories (Yahoo and the ODP still rank fine), a few have taken it upon themselves to order Review Me’s to increase sales. No problem with that, my problem is that still not 1 directory or directory submission service has been willing to prove that they can provide any benefit!

I’m not some sort of bloody amateur here, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on behalf of other people and myself on having links put in directories and to date, they’ve made sweet FA difference to any website I’ve been associated with. It really annoys me when you get some smug git harp up about what benefits their new directory is going to offer (as opposed to the other 500,000 out there with good PR) without having actually proven anything! Whenever it comes up in discussion the only people who ever back a directory are people with invested interest, either people who own a directory or people who run a directory submission service. The webmaster community (or those that I know anyway) don’t like them, have wasted money on them and won’t go back. The problem is simple, too many outbound links, no related original content, very little quality control and nobody actually uses them to find websites (Yeah I’ll just go to MyBigWorthlessDirectory.com and look for that!)

Seeing as how nobody did or is likely to step up to my last challenge, I’m going to set a new one. Maybe the “Make Money Online” market isn’t a good one to show what a worthless rip-off service you’re pushing prove yourself with so I’ll make it even easier. I’ve got a lovely little Captive Insurance website. Over 99% of the population wouldn’t even know what captive insurance is so not much competition there. As it stands the site does ok in terms of visitors and SERPS but has a low page rank and it could always do better. If you’ve got a directory or directory service that you claim has a benefit to webmasters then prove it? When I see any positive affect I’ll give you a nice write-up as well as submit any existing and all future clients sites to your service. If you’re just hyping up another shit web directory that does nothing but line your own pockets then best not apply. I won’t hold my breath waiting.

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2 Comments so far
  1. Is it the end for website directories? | Make money blogging online with Angel UNITED STATES WordPress 2.2.1  September 5, 2007 7:12 pm

    [...] these directories are being penalized, but we just don’t know why. Paul Barlow recently wrote an interesting article questioning what good directories actually do for bloggers, in particular ones that you have to pay [...]

  2. Danny @ MarketTreasure.com MALTA Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6  September 6, 2007 4:51 pm

    Web Directories are no good and here’s why.

    1. There is hardly ever any PR on the page your link is displayed (Your link is not displayed on the homepage (So I don’t think you’re going to get any share of that PR)

    2. An ideal directory would be one with a high PR and low number of websites shown in it. Simply because you get a larger share of the PR. But these directories do not exist, the huge amount of backlinks required for a page to get good PR guarantees the directory will be flooded with submitions, making your small share of PR worthless.

    3. From my post experience google barely spiders directories, any backlinks barely show.

    I’ve been doing directory submitions for years and years, and to tell you the truth in the past they were effective, (Way before PR was being even dreamt of). People actually used directories back then because there weren’t any good search engines around. But now why would you bother with directories when google gives you anything you want.