Two weeks ago, Google took some severe action against a number of general topic web directories. There was the usual uproar on various forums, lots of blog posts from web directory owners and even a post on Sphinn that blamed me (which is hilariously awesome):
All of these directories no longer rank for their trade mark names, Rand Fishkin (who condones link buying) does not like directories so he has been complaining to his buddy Matt Cutts and Matt has gone out and manually penalized a large number of the leading directories.
However, today I wanted to seriously cover the topic of how and why Google might take this move, along with some advice for anyone building a directory in the future. First off, though, I'd like to examine the directories that have been penalized. I'm sure this isn't an exhaustive list (and if you know of more, feel free to list them in the comments), but it does represent a good sampling of the affected domains:
- AvivaDirectory.com
- AliveDirectory.com
- Haabaa.com
- DirectoryDump.com
- BigWebLinks.com
- ElegantDirectory.com
- eWebPages.org
- LinkBook.org
- Trincas.org
- CBravo.com
- CDHNow.com
- FreeWebIndex.com
- Mingleon.com
- PremiumDir.com
- Submission4u.com
- Aerospect.com
- Bakie.com
- LinkForever.net
- LinksArena.com
- LinksFactory.net
- LinksHolder.com
- WebVerve.com
- Wezp.com
- BestInternetResource.info
- DirSpace.com
- Eonte.com
- Frogengine.com
- LinkLister.co.uk
- LinkVerve.com
- LivelyDirectory.com
- Submitdotcom.com
How do we know these sites are penalized? Search results are usually pretty good evidence, and here's the type of pattern you see for a site like Alive Web Directory:
- Doesn't rank for "alive directory"
- Doesn't rank for "alivedirectory"
- Doesn't rank for "alive web directory - internet site resources powerful human edited web directory" (title tag plus a few words from the meta description)
- 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)
I ran through a lot of searches - avivadirectory, aviva directory, haabaa, haabaa directory, directorydump, bigweblinks, elegantdirectory, elegant directory, ewebpages org, ewebpages web directory & catalog, and on and on, through every one of the directories listed above. The patterns were always the same - the sites couldn't rank for their own name, even when combined with obvious phrases from their homepage. They only appeared when the "domain.com" format was used. I would bet money (and lots of it) that these domains are receiving very little, if any, traffic from Google and that links that appear on them aren't currently worth squat.
Why?
Because of these Attributes of Obviously Manipulative Directories (I almost gave that name to this post, but I figured it might be a little much). These aren't "hard and fast" rules - they're just common traits that many of the low quality directories seem to share. I'm NOT saying that you can't run a directory and do any of these - there's always going to be gray areas and matters of intent. These signals, however, are ones that, particularly when combined, make me shy away from a directory:
- General in subject matter - This isn't a bad thing on its own, but it's certainly a signal that you may be getting a manipulative directory . While there are a few good general subject directories that Google probably does want to count (Lii, Yahoo!, DMOZ), there are far more who simply build general subject because it maximizes potential revenue (as anyone can apply).
- Anyone can get in - If you don't filter out low quality, spammy websites from being listed in your directory, even a pretty badly built algorithm can easily spot and remove you. Besides which, Google has been on a tear for years about bad links and bad neighborhoods and how they use the sites you link to as a signal for spam identification.
- Marketing to Webmasters - If your forum signature at Digitalpoint (sorry to stereotype, but it's just so true) contains links to three directories you own, you're probably in possession of three obviously manipulative directories. I'm sure there are a couple exceptions, but if I were Matt Cutts, I'd just tell one of my quality control guys to go spend a few days trawling DP for directory domains.
- Promoting Search Engine Link Value, not Traffic - The great majority of the domains I listed use phrases like "search engine optimized" or "high PageRank" or "highly ranked" to describe their directory. Once again, this should be a clear signal that you're not selling listings in a directory, you're selling links that are supposed to manipulate the search engine rankings.
- Use of Manipulative Link Building - Since the general directory industry seems to pride itself on toolbar PageRank, there's a lot of very shady link building tactics being employed by many directory owners. Sponsoring blog template themes, buying links at crappy directories (I know, the delicious irony of it all is hilarious), putting out junk press releases, releasing link-passing affiliate programs, joining webmaster forums that allow signature links, etc.
- Stuffing Links & Content to "Look Natural" - It's rough to see the effort that many directory owners put into trying to "appear" natural, by adding links to government and education resource websites, major media sites, etc. A lot of the time, it's really easy to spot this "looking natural" business over an actual, naturally built directory. It's usually by category - the section on social sciences is filled with a few great sites, while the page on Minnesota DUI Lawyers looks a little funny.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- Bid for Links - This has to be the most obvious link manipulation ploy I've seen in a while. How could you honestly think that search engines would want to count those links? It's like the eBay of spam, only without negative feedback.
- Multiple Links with Your Choice of Anchor Text - I shouldn't have to explain this one - if you can choose your anchor text and point to several pages on your domain from your listing, it's pretty clear that the directory isn't targeting humans.
- Banner Ads from Your Directory on SEO Sites - It's like waving a flag with a voice-activated, wind-powered speaker that yells "Ban me! Ban me!" Sure, you might get clicks and money and submissions, but you've gotta know that search quality team members read SEO blogs, too - so if you do this, make sure your directory is ready to be manually reviewed by search engineers.
- Demanding Reciprocal Links - If a directory requires that you link back to them in order to be included, or that you can link to other sites they promote in exchange for reduced payment or free inclusion, it's almost certainly trying to manipulate search rankings through linkage.
- Choose Your Own Anchor Text - Not nearly as fun as Choose Your Own Adventure, this screams "manipulative and built for rankings, not humans." DMOZ & Yahoo! and lots of the more legit directories will only use the company name or a site description, rather than allowing the user to decide on their own anchor text. This is particularly egregious when the directory lets you link to 4 or 5 pages and pick the anchor text for each link.
Here's what gnaws at me a bit, though - why these fifty sites? Why did Google penalize a few dozen (or even a few hundred, since I probably don't know about all of them) directories, yet leave the great bulk of low quality, obviously manipulative ones alone?
Maybe they didn't - maybe Google penalized many more directories as well by removing their ability to pass link juice. It's possible, but it doesn't look that way right now. A few friends on the shadier side of link building told me that they can still get top rankings for moderately competitive phrases (usually with local modifiers) just by buying a few hundred directory links. It's a bit expensive, but it still works - and that's a fundamental problem.
I'm going to say this for the record - so long as Google (and Yahoo! & MSN/Live) keep ranking sites and pages purely on the strength of directory links, the directory industry will never disappear. If the search engines want to get serious about paid links and manipulative directories, they're going to need to hit a few thousand general directories harshly. Only when that's been done can they claim real credibility in this arena. Until that time, it's just fear-mongering to keep link buyers on their toes and, hopefully, make the less savvy ones shy away from spending money since they won't know if a directory's been penalized. And yes, for those who are keeping track, I think Google and the other engines should absolutely penalize a directory like SOCEngine (which, as longtime readers might recall, was a directory that SEOmoz started in 2004 & left inactive for the last couple years - what can I say, even I was tempted by the easy money of directories once).
One more thing on that subject - penalizing directories like Alive while still keeping the toolbar PageRank showing as 6/10 isn't going to stop very many people from buying those links. Google may be more concerned about letting the owners of the directory know that they can't manipulate their index, but personally, I wish Google would also worry about the uninformed webmasters and businesses who think that directory link buying is a good way to conduct search marketing. When you show an endorsement in the form of green fairy dust, you can't expect buyers to run a search, see the website's not listed, and make the right assumption about the value.
Before I let you go - I think it's important to cover the other big topic of this post - what makes for a good directory? The answer isn't quite as simple as "Do the opposite of the 12 steps above," although that's certainly a good start. Here's some tips for you directory builders out there who want to reform, take a new stab, and build a truly high quality resource:
- Start with a Niche - Find a topic you're seriously passionate about, from birds to routers to online clothing merchants.
- Don't Just Make a Directory - Put great content about your subject on the site: blog posts, articles, tools, resource lists, charts, diagrams, investigative journalism, etc.
- Offer to Review Sites in Your Niche - But, for goodness sake, only include them if you'd really, honestly endorse them.
- Provide a Reason Why They're Listed - Imagine a fellow hobbyist or researcher in your topic of interest in real life - if you couldn't sit down with that person at a table and show them on your laptop why you included a particular site, DON'T include it.
- Don't Offer Gimmicks or Link Juice - Offer listings on a site that real people who are really interested in your topic read and use and enjoy. If you start down the path of selling links for search engine value, you've lost your way. It can always be a secret side benefit, and plenty of folks who'll come to you for links will be thinking about it, but if you want to be truly immune to any future penalties or devaluations, you can't make it a focus.
Finally, I want to wrap up by addressing those folks who are seeking good, solid directory links that will add value in the long run. Granted, it's no easy task, but there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of great directories out there to be listed in. They usually don't look much like the directories I've commented on above, and many of them require antiquated submission, payment over the phone, a personal email, or even a pitch on why you should be included. Sites like Te Puna Web Directory, the Atlantic Canada Portal Web Directory, Harvard University's Molecular and Cellular Biology Dept. Biolinks, Comic Books X (a good example of some of the points I laid out above, if not a spectacularly designed site), and the Directory of the Center for Indigenous Environmental Resources may be far more difficult to gain entry into, but that's one of the big reasons they'll provide value.
BTW - If search engineers are seriously having trouble finding manipulative web directories, here's a good place to start. Honestly, I don't mind the penalties, just the inconsistent way they're applied.
p.s. I had originally scheduled an interview with Jeff Behrendt of AvivaDirectory (one of the better directories on that list, at least in my opinion) about this topic, but Jeff's bowed out, unfortunately. Sorry about that - hopefully the post is still valuable without his input (though I would have loved to have it).
Uh oh, Rand's talking about directories again
BATTLE STATIONS
My thoughts exactly. Google blog search "seomoz" or "fishkin" in an hour and feel the warmth of webmaster fingers burning up the keyboards.
You sank my directory, Google!
I'll weigh in here as both a spammy directory owner and a niche quality directory owner.
Spammy Directory Owner: Let's be honest, we've had a good ride. I have a few phplinkbid and phplinkdirectory domains. I honestly can't say I don't blame Google for filtering the junk. I've been kinda amazed at how much they let directory owners get away with. I put a lot of work and time into these sites though, and I'd hate to lose them and the revenue they continue to provide. Even though I wish they'd have less of a penalty, I do know that directories are a microcosmic incestuous industry. As you stated above, many directory owners "partner" with other directory owners who partner with other owners, etc. Whether it "sponsored" links, package deals, or another form of support, directory owners are often the biggest buyers of directory listings. Link bid directories are even a worse example of this. The top 10 sites on most directories are mostly other link bid directories. It becomes a game of who has the most exposure on the most directories at this point. Who cares if Google has you listed as long as you can maintain a top 10 spot on the four or five largest bid link directories. If you can be seen there, other directory owners will come to your site and buy your links.
Niche Directory Owner: I kind of like the idea that Google is reducing the amount of noise in the space. A couple niche directories I manage have a 70-80% decline rate for new submissions. I rewrite descriptions as a review because I worry the site owner is using the same description for every submission. I constantly *add* sites that I find. I don't just wait for submissions, I try to seek out quality sites that fit my niches. These directories have become extremely valuable to me. I treat them like I'm citing a research paper from my college days. If sites don't have the meat, then why would I quote them? My only hope is that Google doesn't hit some false-positives while they are in the "filter out bad directories" mode. I don't think that I have anything to worry about with these sites, but I really don't want to wake up one morning and see that they tanked.
So, I kinda have mixed feelings over all this. I kinda feel like this guy. I guess, at least now I can start focusing my energies on my quality directories and let the others become inactive.
Good point!
It is unfortunate that this industry has its roots in google guidelines (submit your sites to as many directories as possible?) - The problem I see here is one of education - If I didnt know much about SEO - and lets say typed in "widgets london" and saw this directory "anythinggoes.co.whatever" Was offering a link on that page for £xx - I would be tempted to pay for that link.
It would be wrong if I did that for PR - thats just trying to manipulate results.
But in instances where I bought it to get visibility, hence share of traffic on a page that turned out tops for my targetted query term, then why not?
Despite the fact that most of these directories tend to be generalised, quite a few have good results for niche sectors, and in these areas - buying a text ad link isnt sucha bad idea.
In the UK, a large number of these are springing up as pre-prepared sites for local areas, with content ready populated, and sold at £0,000's - with the enticement of building up an online advertising service. Unfortunately the people that buy links / Adverts on these are the small independent businesses who have just recently ventured online.
Thanks for your very honest take on things roadies. That's interesting.
One "Sign of a bad directory" You may want to add to your list is those which REQUIRE reciprocal links in order for you to be accepted, and which say they will drop you if you drop their reciprocal link.
I know its an obvious point to experienced search marketers, but not so for those just starting out.
That's an excellent point - I'll add it to the post :)
Hi
when u have a great content and a great website that people want to visit, then its really sad not be in the top 5 for your desired keywords, and we all know that even if you have the best content in your industry u still wont get in the top 5 just because you deserve it.
Now without being in the top 5, people wont find you, studies had demonstrated that more than 80% of web users dont get past the first 5 websites, the problem is that even the people who will like your content and would love to link to you will never know about you.so there is 2 way to do it:
The first way : pay Mr Rand or another professional SEO company 10k/Month, Mr Rand will do it the right way, since u already have the best content in your industry he will probably Create incredible link baits which will get u an avalanche of links. he will contact every relevant website and ask them to link to you, he will probably buy a few links too (even if he wont admit this one lol), ok ok lets call it Advertising, he will advertise your website in some very relevant and high quality websites, this will get you some traffic too.
Infortunately not everyone can afford the fees of Mr rand and other professional SEO companies that know exactly what they are doing. 99% of websites cant afford those fees, which means that even with the greatest content in the world, rankings are all about Money.
So the second way and the solution for people like you, me (the me of 2002-2003 am doing very ok now lol) and 99% of other webmasters who struggle's to pay the hosting fees is web directories,article directories, blog posts.. web directories still works perfectly for medium and even some very competitive keywords, from my own experience and as rand said about 100 paid directory listings with your targeted keywords as anchor text will definitely help you get in the top 20 may be even in the top 10 (depending on the competition), now at least u are visible and because of your great content People/webmasters will start linking to you and after a while u will get the position that your website deserve. is this manipulating the search engines ? definitely NO.
Thanks.
GoldHat.
I think you hit the nail on the head Rand when you say that penalizing them while leaving the littlegreenpagerank (TM) will not do anything to solve the problem.
ZOMG PR6 - BUY BUY BUY!
Google seriously need to get rid of the toolbar pagerank. At the moment I think it does FAR more harm than good to people who don't know anything about SEO and even people who know a little about SEO, small business owners trying to do SEO in house and the like.
I have to disagree with "7. Setting up "Premium" Sponsorships".
We frequently have our clients buy listings in niche directories solely for the purpose of traffic and often times the best category may be full to the point that we have to purchase a Premium (higher on the page) listing in order to have a chance at getting any of that page's clickthroughs to our client's site.
I agree that a directory that promotes itself as having a high PR and also sells Premium listings is pretty suspicious, but I don't think that the idea of a Premium listing itself is a bad thing.
Agreed ToddE... doesn't Yahoo offer premium listings? - i.e. Yahoo! Sponsor Listings. Sure they'll never get dinged cuz their the big boys, but I 'm just sayin...
I should probably clarify - I don't mean ALL premium listings - I really mean the ones that promises more PageRank/links by being listed on more pages. I'll try to clear that up in the post.
I agree with you Rand, but I have to remark that Google does not do the assessments whether or not a directories purpose is to game the search engines or to provide value to the user based on the factors you posted here.
They are a bit less careful looking at this and penalize you hard and forever for reasons that have nothing to do with SEO. I know what I am talking about, but won't start with this rather long story here and now. At another time and another place maybe.
Web directories often (pretty much always) need the search engine rankings while they are young and growing to be able to grow a customer base and often also to retain it, because people start often at the general search engines first to then end up at the same niche sites that provide the needed extra value for the user time and again. I rarely start searching at Wikipedia for example (even though I am an active editor) , but I often end up there spending some time researching some stuff, because I got there via a highly ranked result from Wikipedia in the SERPs for my initial searches at Google or other search engines.
While I use wikipedia over and over again and even click on the wikipedia results on purpose would it be a catastrophe for Wikipedia, if Google would penalize the site and not rank them for anything anymore.
It is certainly the death sentence for a site that pays people to build the sites features and content and has to earn that money first to pay those salaries time and again.
It would be nice if the search engines would look at your determining factors for the determination if a directory was created with the goal to game the SERPS.
Furthermore. I did not check all those directories you mentioned, but I think that making directories disappear from the SERPS via penalties should only be done for non-SEO reasons. Taking away the ability to pass on PageRank is a different story. The directories that don't have other flaws unrelated to the SE gaming part should continue to rank in the SERPS A virtual ban like the one applied to the mentioned directories should also not be permanent, especially if the directory working on adding more and more value for the user to the directory. Good and rich in content directory like sites can not be build overnight.
They always have to start with a somewhat lower quality to get started and be able to expand on it while revenue, acceptance and value grow along with it.
You can't (better, you should not) produce a site with 10,000 reviews in secret and offline to then launch it all at once...not only because it cost a fortune and an eternity to get something like that going and is hard to do if you have to pay for it upfront without generating any revenue at the same time, but it probably would also knock your site out of the index anyway, because Google does not know that you spent this large amount of time offline to create all the content. They only see 10,000 new pages appearing over night = red flag. Phasing it out is then again bad for the user, because you hold back useful content for them just to avoid a search engine penalty for being an over producer who does want to launch with a perfect site or not launch at all.
You could of course design a site that has cool "SPIDER DOOR switches" for sections of the site to let crawlers into selected sections of the site by a flip of a switch and enable each section for them one after another over a period of several weeks or months. while users can see the full content. I have not heard yet that there are much businesses out there that launch a site with this kind of abilities and based on statements made by Google and others is there also not the need for designing such complicated systems just for them. "Just provide good content and you will do fine! We do all the rest. Don't worry about it." Right? Right!
Do you see where I am getting at? As I said, I have some interesting bedtime stories to that subject. Well, I will stop there.
Cheers!
p.s. Is it just me or does the comments feature at SEOMoz stopped working for Internet Explorer. It did at least for me. I had to use Firefox instead. Just FYI.
>Good and rich in content directory like sites can not be build overnight.<
This is so true and one has to start from the beginning. There are web directories that are new and are doing good in terms of informative content, I'll plug my own dirsensei.com and linksquitters.com which is owned by a friend of mine. We are building a good site but it will take time.
I absolutely agree! Slow, steady and content, content, content = a good quality web directory. We are new however we pride ourselves on excellent content.
My Point is that directories start with a dilema. They are not a good directory if they are not listing enough sites to at least cover the space. Yes, quallity over quanity is nice and good, but in this day and age is even the number of quality sites to a subject greater than two or three.
Lets say you cover a broader niche and there are at least several hundred sites with quality content (not 100% identical content). You can start added one after another and spend the 1-2+ hours for each to get the information, writeup a good description etc.
Do the math. Consider that you will not get much if any return while you start working on it for at least 3-6 months. So you either have enough money in the bank, live at home with mom or forget about it, because working and living on the street is even with WiFi and in California no fun (plus you get interrupted by cops all the time :) )
You start with less quality content, generic stuff, like retailers do when they get the retailers product description that is given to everybody. A retailer should change it, but he will put the product up with the generic description first and then work on improving on it.
Same concept. Stopping the webmaster right in the tracks by banning the domain and keeping it banned is just wrong. Google seems to have am "itchy trigger finger" sometimes and shoot first and then ask (not).
They don't have to rank the stuff of course, but what are duplicate content filters for .. eh? When the content is updated, show some love and help the webmaster to get some fruits for his labor. This will also help him to engage customers and build trust and also returning customers, directly or via the SERPS.
This is a typical process of how small businesses are created on the internet who do not have millions of dollars to burn like some well known players out there.
Banning is wrong! Period, except if it is obvious scraped content. Release the ban from the domain, if the crap is being removed from it and let it start from 0.
Smack on Rand! Veticalizing your directory to include other services is the way to go!
Ah... the thorny pasture in between legit directory and link farm. Yahoo sells strong links. Business.com sells links. DMOZ is semi-inactive and defunct but highly trusted. But if thesuperultimatelinkdirectory.com follows this model and offers to review your site, quickly, for an affordable price... it could be randomly and arbitrarily banished without warning.
If Google is gonna penalize people and null their ability to pass juice, then they should stop tempting buyers with a big stick of green toolbar PR. I spent all day manually building links today and it appears that most directory owners and submitters are several years behind the times and are not even remotely attuned to SEO news and reading between the lines as well as you do.
You know thats a good point about yahoo and Business.com - Why doesnt G penalise these two?
Admittedly they are a bit more selective about who they let in, and the processes are manually approved (signs of a good directory) - but most people buy those links for juice!
Excellent comments Bret! Is this Google setting a high barrier-to-entry to startup a directory business? Or are they truly trying to weed out directories with ill repute? ODP powers the GOOG directory, but perhaps they are making way for future plans since that isn't really working out all that well.
If thesuperultimatelinkdirectory.com spends a year or two carefully adding high quality listings without charging and gets tons of links from all over the web, including many sites that aren't listed in the directory, I'd say it's likely they could switch over to a paid model (as long as they don't lower their standards) without getting slapped down by Google.
It wasn't all that long ago that, if you had a good site with lots of original content, you could get it into the Yahoo directory for free. A site I built five years ago has four free listings in Yahoo.
A directory like the ones Rand is talking about here simply doesn't send a search engine the signal that its primary goal is to be a valuable resource so why should the search engine value it?
Actually, Business.com is a really good question, since they allow for some very spammy things, like choosing 4 categories.
Rand,
You are doing a great job of bringing high quality expert level post lately.
I agree. Why Google can't just come out and say "These directories are worthless and pass no link weight" is beyond me.
Google seems intent on trying to solve these issues like a politician, speaking in riddles and never giving a straight answer.
They should remove the PR from every site that doesn't pass weight (maybe they will at the next update).
I can't believe anyone in this industry didn't think they were next to worthless in the beginning anyway. Sure, if you wanted a quick hit for a dodgy site, then you could run with some paid directory links - but looking at paid submission directories (or reciprocal link ones) where you were hanging out with Seattle florists, Krakow hotel directories and mesothelioma lawyers was hardly the answer for a site with ambitions for a longer-term reputation.
Fabulous post, Rand. This should be posted in about 1,000,000 + forum threads (999,995 Canadian) at DP as responses to webmasters posting their new forum ads.
Maybe your next tool should be "Directory Penalty Checker" (Or Directory Dollar Saver?)
Nice analysis of the directory issue. The folks at the DP forums were in an uproar over this. IMO this penalization was fairly predictable though. Too many directory owners ignored the warnings that Matt Cutts provided in regards to sites that tout their ability to pass page rank and help sites rank better in search engines. I also understood some recent chatter about sites that are nothing more than a collection of results with no real content that is helpful to users to be in reference to generic directories.
I like the idea of niche directories with very selective criteria. There is still a place for quality directories but IMO they need to provide more than a listing. I really like directories that actually take the time to review a site and offer some additional information besides a link and a short sentence written by the webmaster. Directory owners need to make an effort to make their directories actually useful to users and provide information that can't necessarily be found anywhere else.
Too many directory owners ignored the warnings that Matt Cutts provided in regards to sites that tout their ability to pass page rank and help sites rank
One sign a directory may be headed for the ban list is by being listed here: www.directory-farm.com
In this post im surprised no one mentioned this awesome paid directory joeant.com
Joe has a great group of discerning editors and the site passes quality link value. Its also amusing to note that their site search is called Dig, and joeant is years older than digg.com.
There are many other quality directories available, and these are my favorites.
These days I tend to think of Google as a teacher who seems the kids misbehaving in the classroom. Google sees what they are doing and occasionally calls on them to prevent them from disrupting the class. However Google knows that if they are not able to get on with their little mischiefs they'll find something worse, and potentially more disruptive to do.
Does it make any sense? :)
Hello Rand,
I am a directory owner, who believes in quality. I ask you to rethink some of your critique of the directory industry from a small business point of view. Many readers only see the generalization, or the text in bold, or the sound byte. I agree with much of your article, BUT I would like to offer a different perspective on some of your points.
“Marketing to Webmasters” Who else should a directory owner market to? For small businesses, forums are an inexpensive way to create traffic and buzz. Forums that focus on directories are no different than a forum that focuses on any other niche. And I’m sure similar link building and cross-promoting goes on in them. So to single out directories is wrong. They may be one of the most obvious, but again to single them out is wrong. I have seen the “big boy” clubs that may have instigated some of this, and maybe more to your point of “Use of Manipulative Link Building and “Interlinking with Other Directories.” Although I would like to add a word of caution to separate out what is actually going on, from what might be considered standard business practices. It is hard to determine a person’s intention when doing marketing or promotion, especially for a newbie, as there is a learning curve. For example, offering “one low price” is a standard offer and there is nothing wrong with it as a marketing technique.
“Promoting Search Engine Link Value, not Traffic” Well on one level don’t they go hand and hand? As a marketer and a small business, shouldn’t you use any sales points to your advantage? When a big company sell advertising are they not using their stature as a way to justify their pricing. Can a directory not also be another form of advertising? For a new or small business a directory is a very affordable way to start getting your name out there.
“Setting up "Premium" Sponsorships” is that not a standard business practice? So why is wrong for a directory to offer it?
“Bid for Links” How is this any different than SE pay-per-click to the highest bidder? Shouldn’t SE’s be penalized? My point is that why is it ok for one and not for the other? Is it the size of the company that’s doing it that matters?
PLEASE UNDERSTAND that I am not defending corrupt directory practices, I just think a person with your influence and leadership has to look very carefully when discussing an issue that may affect peoples livelihood. I have a lot more to say so, please feel free to contact me at anytime.
Good points - I think you're right to say that these aren't "hard and fast rules" - it's more about intent and perception. You can DO all of things you mentioned legitimately. Perhaps I should edit the post to reflect that.
Hi Rand, I appreciate the response and that you would even consider editing it. Thanks!
Great post Rand.
Usually I look for niche directories when I do link building, but its very difficult to find some here in Portugal, because most directories here are very generic.
Do you think that Google might go international with its effort to penalize sites that sells links and/or spammy directory sites? I guess that could be a bit of a gigantic task, if done by hand, even by a hundred Googlers...
I personally don't see much value anymore in directories, other than niche ones, so I guess natural selection on the web should take care of the rest of them. Eventually... as search engines progress, specially vertical search engines.
I can't vouch for mainland europe but I certainliy haven't seen the same level of penalties over here in the UK. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened but from what I've seen there's not the same level as in the US
Some penalties for Germany but as Tom_C stated for the UK, not quite the same level. I'd expect a similar level for the near future though.
Same issues for Argentina
I have noticed that some small companies’ web position in Google is being damage by local web directory because their specific brands and keywords appear on the directories as a result of being listed there. Even though is good for small business to be listed in this kind of directories, some websites have a good chance of getting good positioning in Google over these local web directories, at least with their business name and specific keywords that are kind of unique for them.Basically what is happening here is that local web directories are getting first at Google search results by using small companies’ specific keywords (business brand) and description on page titles (information that they fill in when they register to appear at this local directories).This makes small businesses to lose their only hope to be listed among the first, even with their own brand or products as keywords. The real problem is that when you click on these results, the business name appears but within 20 other companies with no useful order, what makes possible for customers to arrive at the door of the main competitor. Local directories have the advantage of having hundreds 9or more) of businesses in one category with different combinations of keywords and descriptions what makes them powerful in Google search results. So landing on a local directory after a Google search is kind of getting into a second search effort for online customers. This is why is so important for small companies to increased (and invest on) SEO and marketing strategies efforts in order to be listed over local directories in Google search results, at least with their own brand name as keyword. Who looses with poor and uncontrolled local web directories? Small businesses with unique names (and flash websites) that are listed on web directories and online consumers that get a lot of web directories as search results but with poor information and no added value.
Interesting, I am just researching the idea of submitting to web directories and found this old thread. I just Google'd most of the directories you meantion, using the same search terms, and most are ranking well with sitelinks. So maybe they have all recovered and Google likes them again now?
Same here Jon. Interesting. Would be very interested to hear what others think?
Oh no, a bunch of crap directories got dumped? Who would have thought that could ever happen? Oh, the horrible injustice of it! But don't look at the garbage that got thrown out... blame one of the many people who said "hmmm.... something smells like garbage around here."
Any chance you can explain this further? What we try to do is add 'value' to our directory by hunting down good sites to add to our directory. Is that not the rightt hing to do?
Thanks for the reply . . .
DAVE
Stuffing Links & Content to "Look Natural" - It's rough to see the effort that many directory owners put into trying to "appear" natural, by adding links to government and education resource websites, major media sites, etc. A lot of the time, it's really easy to spot this "looking natural" business over an actual, naturally built directory.
Adding good, content rich and quality sites is definately the thing to do - but a large number of directory owners, especially the ones charging for inclusion, tend to allow anyone to go on. A Health directory is monitored by human element, and constantly weeded for poor sites - the review factor by and actual individual will show up when the links are leading to "good" neighbourhoods" and not spammy ones.
Personally I believe a "good" directory should have a description of the site linked to, written by the human reviewer.
But again there is the problem of subjectivity - one person may see a site as very useful, while another will see it as total rubbish. But I am sure we agree when I say that an obviously poor site is easy to spot.
Dave - I think I was just trying to illustrate a common trend I see between directories that I, personally, might view as manipulative. There's nothing "wrong," per se, with linking out to good educational and government resources, but there is a pattern that appears between these less valuable types of directories and those that provide more value.
I checked one of the directories listed. Checked the health category - most of the sites were penis enlargement!! No wonder they get banned and no wonder over at Digital Pointless they got enraged.
Rand, it's got nothing to do with a link directory being general.
The better explanation is that Google doesn't like competition. Google is the biggest unthemed search engine in the world. If users can't find a site as ranked by Google, they certainly shouldn't be shown an alternate way to find it. Especially not in another horizontal search engine.
A niche directory works simply because they
a) fulfill a task that Google themselves are unable to perform
b) might be too small a fish for Google to chase (for the moment).
c) might well jeopardize the search result quality
Hey, Rand, can you talk to Matt Cutts about my ranking for 'internet marketing'? I mean, since you guys are so tight and all...
:)
Seems pretty clear cut. Thanks for a great post!
Thanks for your excellent post. Never came across such a simple & beautiful explanation for the Google penalty.
Great post Rand. The interview with Jeff would have been interesting, personally I think Aviva are one of the better directories as many of their own links are natural from linkbait posts rather than all paid for.
Definitely agree that if the mentioned directories are penalised thousands more should be too and removing PageRank makes perfect sense to stop people submitting.
Agreed kevgibbo. Matt Cutts praises sites that come up with buzzworthy stuff, even when it's off-topic (like the Real Estate guy who did the funny "Are Paid Links Evil?" video), yet Aviva Directory comes up with interesting linkbait that's actually on-topic and somewhat valuable, and they seem to get no love for it.
I'm with you, Kev - I like a lot of what Aviva has done with thei viral content. It would seem that despite those positives, other aspects of Aviva made them subject to penalization.
That a well written and explained Article...if I could give you 2 thumbs up I would!!!
It does seem that G is slowly trying to destroy the industry that it created itself - What I am interested in is after directories, will it target sites selling text link ads on their site purely for link Juice?
I know Matt did a post a while back, and there was a furore about the Real Estate industry some while back -but I think G needs to give clearer webmaster guidelines for those who do not keep informed about SEO matters - especially the Mom and Pop industries where they still believe Keyword stuffing is OK...
Yeah, that is one of my main issues. The majority of small mom and pop websites are not able to understand or keep up with Google guidelines. They are too busy running their businesses.
You forgot "SEO Friendly," which translates to "pick your own anchor text."
That's another good addition - thanks Bob. :)
I am about to submit a client to some human edited directories and I will give a report as to what happens in the next 30 days or so.
Unfortunately we have done more than directories. I wish i could find a client where we only did human edited directories for 2 months, but thats hard to do when they need to start generating revenue............
I have seen massive movements in rankings for some extremely competitive keywords. We did the following.
Maybe next time. It would be nice to hear from anyone who has seen a nice boost in rankings from HE directories.
Is this list of banned domains still up to date? I can now see that Alive directory comes up in searches in private browsing sessions?
Submit to niche directories, these directories send decent amounts of traffic simply due to the fact that their category pages have such good visibility in the results pages of search engines. People search for a specific company or type of business, find a category page from a niche directory, and then visit the sites that are listed within that category. So, if you can find a directory that caters to your specific niche, by all means include it in your submission strategy.
Hm.. I checked today the directories and some of them are still present in Google. For example,the Avivadirectory is still ranking and is in the result page. So what can it mean? They are already not a spammy directory? Or how can it influence my website?
It is amazing that the article is helpful today as well.
I'm in the process of creating a directory. After going through the post I will be going in for a niche directory. The directory would be for SEO professionals.
Thank you all of you for your comments and thanks to Danny for bringing some sense into the comments on this forum
definitly still usefull stuff
I have read all your reviews on what can be deceptive of directorys, but believe it is too harsh a result. While i believe it is good to devalue spammy directories, there are alot of good directories out there that are managed well that should be rewarded for review and inclusion in there.
And like you mentioned earlier in the peace, if this is the full case they should close down dmoz as it is totally like this in many ways. While the review side looks fine, the main issue is only only editors websites or bribed editors get there sites indexed. standard submissions never get approved no more.
Is'nt this deceptive... Sounds like the same to me... Also check out all of the websites in there, some are really dodgy. Also the yahoo directory charges and says it increases search engine position in a round about way but not directly.
I think small quality well edited directories should be able to sell there listings for inclusion. I do agree they shouldn't talk about passing pr for search engine rank, as selling technique and yes ban these ones i agree. To be honest i dont know why they do as most submitters to directorys know they pass rank.
My full point is where can we stop at if we ban legit small directorys just because they are general,should they next derank blogs that have comments (with url link) from low value blogs... I think they should just get rid of google pr and just rank without the green button then most of the problem solved!
Other than that, thankyou for the interesting post.
[sorry for the new comment on an old post!]
I've been reading a lot about link building and using directories lately--and there is plenty of advice on how to spot the bad ones...but nobody seems to be taking on the job of listing the good ones (sort of a directory of directories, I guess?)
I know it seems silly--and since most directories can be quite niche, it would be impossible to list even 10% of the good ones...but would anyone be so kind to list maybe the top 10? 20? maybe even 50 well known, reputable directories? It seams everyone will throw out Yahoo, and DMOZ...but then after that none get named.
Bueller?
Excellant and well detailed blog post!
Being the owner of The Best Web Directory .com, I am concerned with these latest changes in the Google requirements and am working on making a number of changes to try and meet their specs for a more user friendly link directory.
Hi Rand,
Thanks for a great post.
I am sorry if i trouble you, but i have a question.
Our website www.sgdnetworks.com a web development and designing company.
We do offer web hosting and web hosting page have good ranking and got good traffic as well.
These days we found that some of our compitetors has created about 80 free blogs and given our url from each post. So google has penalized our web hosting page several times and came into the results once again today.
So how to avoid such practices?
And some people has copied our web hosting page and sending massive traffic. We found and reported to their hosting providers.
But how to prevent all these and is there any way to restrict those things?
Your comments will be very helpful to us.
Regards
Venkat
Most of the time (if you know them) have contact with your competitor, tell them you found out it was them and tell them you will sew them if it does not stop.
In the worst case scenario. Give them the equal treatment. (worked for me)
You can't read much about SEO and not hear how important in-bound links are, so it is not surprising that people with poor rankings are desparate to get a link from anybody.
Thats all well and good, search for link opportunities from directories, blogs, anywhere you can find them. BUT before you register, request, or pay from them ask yourself, if in-bound links did not improve your PageRank, would you care if you were listed there or not. If it wouldn't be important then it is probably not going to benefit you anyway.
Remember it is about relevance. If it is not relevant to you, why would you think it would be relevant to the search engines?
Fantastic post Rand. I'll definately keep what you said in mind the next time I consider signing up for directories. What particularly strikes me is how many directories continue to pop, even now 2 years after you wrote this, which continue to go against what Google believes. The older directories could perhaps be forgiven, but the new ones....i think not.
JeffreyRomano
This is a pretty old post but still relevant to contemporary SEO world. In fact, I bumped into this post while doing a research on whether a link Yahoo Directory Listing is worth it. I wonder a listing which is sitting in a category that sits deep inside at level five or six, would drive any link juice to your site. For example, there are listings that are sitting on a page with a zero PageRank. Simply because Yahoo Directory Listing has a strict editorial guideline doesn't mean that a link from a deeper page makes a world of difference to your link profile. Plus, if anyone can afford to spend $300 per site per year gets a link from Yahoo Directory Listing, how does it qualify even as a quality link?
Perhaps it is a about time we have an update on directories in general.
It's all the same.
Thank you, you have shown how biased Matt Cutts and the Big-G spam team are. I notice that DMOZ is still PR8, however they are the original deep linkers.
https://www.dmoz.org/Home/Cooking/Baking_and_Confections/Cakes/Chocolate/
That link alone is almost all deep links.
I know that this is an old post but I noticed when googling several of the abovementioned directories that their urls appeared in 1st position. Rand, is there anything that google has changed in their algorithm since this article was published and are there any new techniques we can use to identify spammy directories?
Well, nowadays a web directory it is not what it used to be years ago. 99% of the web directories will accept your listing as long as you pay the "review fee". But if you check the internal pages, all you'll see are duplicate title tags, 0 content and thousands of links from which 50% dont even work.
I also have a directory (jasminedirectory.com) and even if it's 3y old, I have only like 200 listings. I think I added more manualy and rejected quite a few paid submissions.
I tried to add unique content on all cat/subcat pages... validate etc.
Thanks Rand as i own one directory the above said things will help me to monitor my directory not to fall on that category.
Thanks
Sri
Hi, great post thank you for sharing. I have done a submit on our website on joeant about 3 months ago with the one off fee, and still i can't see any backlink from them. Anybody knows why? Thank you in advance.
Well, I've got an interesting "experiment" going on related to this post. In August I launched a company that manages thousands of local online business directories. The focus is on developing directories that are useful for humans and don't violate Google's guidelines, but that provide SEO benefits as well. We've launched about 2,500 directories so far, and over half of them are ranking in the top 10 on Google for the keyword terms they target. It will be interesting to see if our directories end up getting penalized at some point or if they continue to rank well. If anyone wants to check out some of our directories and give feedback (be as critical as you want, it's all useful) feel free.
I know its an old post but this just stopped me making a huge mistake. Going to reconsider my plan!
Thank You Rand!! :-)
Quite an article,solves some of my confusions.I go for niche directory sites!
Go Rand. You know how to wind them up : )
I love that they refer to you and Matt as "buddy". You know you've made it when they say that out loud.
At this time I'm running through a long list of directories and checking each one. Not submitting, not till I've graded based on my criteria. I'll add your 'search engine' idea as part of this, probably the very first one to complete.
Thanks
I noticed that open site explorer is giving *.directoryworld.net/ at 74 Domain Authority. But directoryworld.net requires reciprocal links.
How do I know if this directory is good for SEO or when I should trust the DA?
I'd avoid reciprocal links, personally. Would you want your link there if it was only for traffic and not any potential link value? Trying to think of the last time I used a directory like this, and it's been many years.
hey Rand,
A very informative post and seems like the value of this post is greater now than it would have been then.
Well done..mate...
Everything is now back on track for ODP site re-indexing.
See that the Duplicate Content has fallen to almost zero URLs indexed:
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Anewhoo.com+-inurl:www
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Awww.newhoo.com
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Anewhoo.org+-inurl:www
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Awww.newhoo.org
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Admoz.com+-inurl:www
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Awww.dmoz.com
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Acore.dmoz.aol.com
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Adirectory.mozilla.org
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Agnuhoo.com+-inurl:www
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Awww.gnuhoo.com
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Agnuhoo.org+-inurl:www
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Awww.gnuhoo.org
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3A207.200.81.135
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3A207.200.81.139
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3A207.200.81.140
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3A207.200.81.175
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3A207.200.81.183
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3A207.200.81.184
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3A207.126.111.202
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3A207.126.111.231
The Canonical Domain now has almost a million pages indexed:
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Awww.dmoz.org
Some Supplemental Results can hang around for a very long time:
www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3A207.200.81.154
That IP address has been out of use for a long time.
Including the direct IP address accesses, and various sub-domain and load-balancer URLs, there used to be ~34 ways to get to ODP content as hosted by Netscape/AOL servers. Now there is only one way.
This post really managed to stun me.
I just don’t get it – what is the big difference between someone who pays to Google to be on the main page as a sponsor of a keyword (adwords) to someone that buys a link from a directory?
The way I see it, if a company spends $300 to promote a keyword there is a good reason for that. It means that they are serious about what they are doing. It is way better than to try and spend hours and days to get artificial links. By the end of the day money talks. Even on Google – the sponsored links give you much better result to a query than the (poor) organic ones.
Google is the God of the internet and now the ‘Make no evil’ company decided to be the Satan too. By banning directories, they ruined many people livelihood. It seems like there was a meeting over there and someone said – ‘Hi this Aviva directory and Alive earn too much on our back – lets show them who rules’. And they did.
They have double standards no doubts – it is a shame that people applause them for that.
I guess Google's only argument to this would be that they're trying to separate those who pay for rankings from those who are ranking based on the editorial quality/endorsements.
Well looks like google filters decided that DMOZ should also be penalized
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dmoz&btnG=Google+Search
Doesn't rank for the domain name anymore.
Now that smells fishy.
I tried the searches ODP and Open Directory Project, since those are in the title of the ODP homepage. They're nowhere to be found on the "ODP" search, and wikipedia has kidnapped the first position for "open directory project". Nooooo... I don't see any odd relationship between Google and Wikipedia there.
I understand the ODP results and why dmoz isn't found there: ODP also happens to be Office Depot's stock symbol. That makes perfect sense.
But what I don't get is the "Open Directory Project". If someone is searching for "Open Directory Project", don't you think they have a pretty specific goal in mind. Perhaps they know that the url isn't opendirectoryproject.com, but can't remember what it is. Those of us who've been around know where it is by heart. But what about the local small business that I just gave some advice to over lunch and can't remember the URL?
Now tell me Google, how does sending someone to Wikipedia when they are searching for Open Directory Project equal quality, relative results?
That would be like MSN sending anyone searching for "Google" on their engine to a yellow pages listing. Doesn't help much, does it?
I think it's only because of the redirects they've set up in the past few months.
They do have the issue of duplicate content with the Google Directory, but all the searches I run for them - ODP, Open Directory, www dmoz org, dmoz.org, etc. come up with serious relevancy problems. I could be wrong, but this looks pretty new - maybe they did get some kind of penalty along with the other directories above?
*** ...all the searches I run for them - ODP, Open Directory, www dmoz org, dmoz.org, etc. come up with serious relevancy problems. I could be wrong, but this looks pretty new - maybe they did get some kind of penalty along with the other directories above? ***
The ODP indexing problem is a very simple canonical URL indexing problem. There is no ban.
After years of having both www and non-www open for indexing for newhoo.org and dmoz.com and dmoz.org, a set of site-wide redirects were recently set up to point to only www.dmoz.org. At first things went very well, but then some problems surfaced in the last few weeks.
Some internal links (mostly in informational and FAQ pages) had always been hard coded as dmoz.org URLs (that is, as non-www URLs). Most of the rest of the directory (i.e. the navigation around the category structure itself) was implemented as root-relative URLs.
The former may have caused some confusion to Google's spidering and indexing of those pages once the redirect to www had been implemented.
The latter would not have been a problem, except for one thing. The ODP has also been making some infrastructure changes and hardware upgrades at the same time. Somehow, Google found the URL for one of the load-balancing servers and began indexing the directory under that sub-domain. That problem is always a lurking danger with any sort of URL that does not confirm the base domain either within the href attribute value, or within a base tag within the page header.
When the redirects were recently applied to the various ODP domains (to fix up the directory as www.dmoz.org only), one of the load-balancing URLs was missed. Additionally, Google also took exception in some way to the various redirects as implemented, and decided that the load-balancer URL was the more authorative URL for the site, and has been busily indexing those URLs instead.
AOL techs are well aware of the issues. The directory was previously indexed under at least 7 URL variants (counting www and non-www separately of course), but now with the redirects in place only two are possible.
Google picked the wrong one! This was due to a coding error on the site, some bad luck, missing one redirect, and some things that only Matt Cutts knows.
I also covered some of these points at https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3437548.htm about a month ago, with several follow-up postings more recently.
lol oh no web directories again I can't wait for the responses of this
It is a superb article to blow all confusion; Still considering myself a newbie in this area; It will help me a lot to develop and grow my sites. A lot to learn and a lot of effort to give. Thanks to Google and the people behind it to give a strong slap to all QBC
Great post Rand. Those directories sure made a lot of money, but it seems for them its time to say good bye to directories and link bid sites.
I don't know and I too am confused but it was a good effort from Google to weed out the crap from the directory industry. But I'll continue to build dirsensei.com, its new but its doing something right on its content. So whatever happens I gave it my best and will continue to do so.
As a noob, this is great info when overwhelmed with how many directories there are and how lost one can get if he doesn't know exactly what's up. Thanks for the info!!
A company I used to work for regularily uses addurl.nu for their clients sites. I recently chatted with Aaron Wall about it though and he thinks the problem with it, is that the links won't appear "natural" enough. Judging by Rand's post though, there are a few more things to really consider. Oh the humanity lol.
Has anyone here ever used addurl.nu?
Matt Cutts: "Wow, that's a great list - 890 directories - thanks!"
I haven't used the service before, but I'm guessing that more than a few domains on that list are going to be experiencing a similar fate as our friends from the post. Services like that seem to pop up every now and then, but as soon as they get popular, someone from the engines makes them less valuable.
That's one of Jim Westergren's sites. I remember Dan Thies writing a pretty caustic post on his blog about it.
Good job Google! This step shud have come a lill earlier. I personally feel dat not many directories r relevant n dis is a pleasant news for SEO community who run after directory links.
Thnx Rand.
Rand,If you are interested, I can send you the URL of a directory that does not conform to what you have listed as mistakes (or vices) and still penalized for several months now. (I would not want to make it public here, so it would be sent with detailed background information in e-mail if you send me one).
I'm very interested - please do send. :)
Hay randfish
Please also add this directories on list.
https://www.pakdir.net
Thanks
Looks like a heavy focus on PageRank in there. There's also a lot of empty categories, a general focus, a lot of links to other directories - I'd be concerned about the value of pakdir, personally.
If google has penalized these directories, does that mean the sites that have requested a link from them will also get penalized?
I just looked at some of them and found some of my clients competitors on them. :-)
In terms of real penalties the answer is no if the links are one way (at least it should be I guess you never know for sure). If they actually link back to these directories they could have penalty problems. You can't control who links to you so you should not be penalized but if you link back you obviously control that so there is potential to be penalized.
Even if they don't link back it may actually look like they have a penalty in terms of where they appear in the SERP. If they were getting any link juice from the listing they had it will now be gone and it could cause them to drop. Of course, when this happens many people will assume it is a penalty when in reality it is because some of their link popularity has been reduced. If they build that link pop back up they should again move up.
Mgray - I doubt that anyone's getting penalized for being listed; maybe if you're listed in many, many of those directories, and not much else, the engines might take action (but even then, it would be surprising to me).
Great post. I like to think of Groucho Marx when I approach directories.
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”Groucho MarxI am not sure whether Groucho Marx would have been any good at search engine marketing but he certainly had the right idea. The easier it is to list on a directory the less you want to join it.
Bob Mutch has a good list although I don't 100% agree with his ranking criteria.
https://www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html
Hi Ashley - the the SEOcompany site yours?
I have sent quite a few Mom and Pop businesses to look at the various tools on there to help on their SEO... ;-)
Re: Your Goucho Marx comment - lol! So true...
Thanks for the update on determining which directories are of value. I actually used one of the posts here on SEOMoz to find good directories as you referenced a website (can't remember which one right now) that ranked directories and found BigWebLinks.com, unfortunately I did use them. I guess at least it's only one link, but guess I will be more careful now. Thanks for the info.
I would assume that your link on that site won't bring you any penalty, it just won't bring you any benefit either.
Can anyone else confirm this?
Hope that is the case, rather take no benefit than penalty for sure :)
I may get effect by directories punishment since some of my links are from above list. My SERP droped 5 position for certain keywords.
I agree with everything in your list re what makes a manipulative directory except for "Choose Your Own Anchor Text" because Google demotes a site for overuse of anchor text. Even with what Google calls "Normal Linking" people usually just copy the title of the page--which is usually your preferred anchor text. The only way around this is being able to occasionally "choose your own anchor text."
which part, the one about directory owners being friends with Google employees or old web directories making money manipulating rankings in Google?
If it isn´t niche, its gonna go down the pan sooner or later.
lol... thats probably only if you havent resources to make a large directory good quality.
Take business.com- its not exactly niche (well not too niche) but does well...
Then you create a number of directories, one for each niche and next time Matt looks at it he will say... "you own quite a lot of domains.. mhh..."
"shoot, I forgot the privacy protecting when I registered the domains!" hehe.
It sounds funny and I would laugh, if it wouldn't be so sad.
Hi Rand,
thank you for this post. I helped launch a SharePoint Search community resource site in May, and we have yet to receive a Google PR. I am a beginner when it comes to SEO, but have certainly tried to do everything by the book. Yes, we link to a LOT of resources, but only ones we think are worthwhile and specific to the topic of Enterprise Search (even more specifically for SharePoint). Many, many SharePoint search experts have linked to our site as an excellent resource (without us asking!), and we do not charge for anything listed on our site (completely non profit). Any suggestions or thoughts as to why we're getting no love from Google?
Bravo Rand..... Seriously. Up until now, I was considering bypassing SEOmoz as one of my go-to sources for information/a-good-read, as the posts lately, imo, appear to be passing a different taste.
But this one... much much better. Good rant!
Here's something to consider tho - I don't own a directory, so I can't really say if they get good traffic from Google or not. But wouldn't it be safe to say that the early, average, webmaster-noob is going to run across those directories anyways, whether it be from places like digital point, or basic advertising.
I think so, and I believe thats how most people find them all in the first place. Thus, I doubt G is really dealing a whole lot of damage.
Furthermore, you'd have to admit, the directory owners really don't give a rats a$$ if G like's 'em or not. It's all about making money, period.
Would SEOmoz be willing to compile a huge list of 'SEOmoz Approved Directories'??
Would be very interesting to see, from multiple perspectives.....
They already have a list of "SEOmoz approved directories" in the premium section. It's a good, but small list - that is valuable for some types of link building projects. But many clients won't be able to get into many of the free, quality niche directories.
Thrilled we could engage you with this post - I'll try to keep up with good stuff over the next week :)
Hello Rand,
I have one question i need to ask you because you make these directory posts so often you seem like an expert in this link-bait industry.
The question are casino and adult sites good for the content of a directory?
I can understand that you say General is not the way to go, but what if one have a general directory (that does contain resources). I have heard that many people frown upon directories which contains adult / gamble sites. But if you own a general directory aren't those categories come in as general, so theoretically gambling and adult sites should be an ok for resource.
Than why there is a big fudge about gambling / adult sites in a QUALITY Directory ??? If these sites degrade the value of a site than Google have no value beacause it list 154,000,000 results for porn and 39,400,000 for adult sites. Also google shows 58,900,000 for gambling.
This one question always bothered me about General Directories (and quality determination) because if they eliminate these categories than they are not general ??
Another question from reading above in your comments you said offering links on extra pages in directories is a bad sign? I thought if you offer it for a resource than it is good because thinking your way WoW Directory is not a good inspiration as it links your website on all the deeper pages and in more categories.
Quote:
I agree. Why Google can't just come out and say "These directories are worthless and pass no link weight" is beyond me.
Response:
The reason is that many of the old web directories out there are still passing rankings and those web directories are link farms as well. Many of the owners are friends with Google employees, so Google wants to help them stay successfully in business.
huh? Thats not true to be honest.
Directories are not half as manipulative as services like payperpost, I am seeing many sites buying off topic blog links and seriously rocking the search engine rankings, large companies can get away with it scot free, where as the little guys who are just trying to break bread with their general web directories get penalized (and so do the website owners who have got listed in them indirectly). It is the paid links that have brought these directories down because like you have said there are directories on the list like Aviva that are quality. If Google is going to penalize these directories then they should also penalize large insurance, loan companies etc. who are blatantly going out and buying paid blog links. If Google were to penalize all of the directories that had bought paid links and not penalize sites buying paid links then their SERPs would be controlled by paid links and the top spots for business related phrases would go to shadier sites. Building natural links to a blog is a piece of cake, but building natural links to an FSA governed insurance website or a corporate real estate site is near on impossible, for these sort of sites the only legit way for them to get links is web directory listings. How do you propose these sorts of sites get links? Do these sites not deserve to rank in the search engines? Most of the directories that are listed do not link to spammy sites and most of them organise the sites into relevant categories, if there were no directories then how would Google differentiate between spam sites and corporate business sites?
My point exactly!!
Very often friends and family approach me to ask how they can get on page one on google - and very often I dont know what to say to them!!!
Hence I assit them to optimise for long tail... eg " this business in this town etc"
You are kidding, right? Seventeen entries for Europe is quality?
I think the SEOmozzers - and most professional SEOs - spend much of their time getting sites like that links with creativity and ingenuity. If you are a paid-up member here, I would suggest reading through the posts and whatever articles are behind the curtain. It will help tremendously in giving you a fresh way of looking at those types of sites.
Creative ways to get links to an FSA governed insurance site? There are none. I do not need any help, ask my clients. Most professional SEOs? Who are you to say who the most professional SEOs are? What are you some kind of SEO god who knows everything?
It's my opinion, which is why I wrote "I think" in front of it. The comment was intended to be helpful, given
a) that you have signed up for premium membership here
b) that you found it difficult to conceive of building links for corporate real estate sites (as well as the regulated insurance sites that you mention) despite the fact that getting links for those types of sites has been a repeated topic of conversation here
c) that you had considered that the only "legit" way to get links was through these types of web directories
I'm sorry if that offended you - it wasn't intended to. But, having said that, I stand by the comment that most professional SEOs that I have come across would not have problems building links for a non-blog corporate site. Your mileage obviously does vary.
How would the most professional SEOs that you have come across go about getting links to an FSA governed insurance site?
You obviously work in this area and I don't and, because you repeat "FSA-governed insurance", I presume that there are legal restrictions about what one can and can't do which don't help one when it comes to getting links.
However, your original post was much wider in scope in mentioning "corporate real estate sites" and "corporate business sites" and this is what I was referring to.
In answering your question, I can do little better than to point to this site (and, no, that's not a crawl to Rand or the rest of the staff). Corporate SEO is a pretty competitive area and yet this site consistently manages to obtain links from their competitors for high-dollar contracts by providing unique content that viewers and visitors want to read and see.
You could argue that this is a blog - and, for the purposes of this discussion, I'll let that rest (although it could equally be a set of articles on a static site).
However, SEOmoz provides a range of content that is applicable to any corporate site (apart from any external regulations):
I have a real estate client with a very web 2.0 blog who absolutely rinses it for links, he has had links from the New York Times, Channel 4 and many other authority sites, linkbaiting for this site is easy. I have another client who sells Polaris World property (www.polarisproperty.co.uk) this guy just doesn't want anything bar Polaris World news on his site, I have come up with idea after idea and every one gets rejected. Polaris World news is very boaring, I had him contributing at Netscape and we had some success with getting the news stories voted on but that is about as far as it went.
Well, I can sympathise with dealing with unco-operative clients, but then we aren't really talking about general problems with corporate sites, but more about those corporate sites that don't wish to buy in to improving their organic listings.
Even so, I was surprised to see what space Polaris was working in, as there are heaps more opportunities for link-worthy content when it comes to foreign affairs that potential customers are nervous about.
In a way I can see where he is coming from with it, he wants the people who visit his site to buy Polaris World property, he doesn't want them to read 101 things to do in Murcia and he doesn't want to give off the impression that his company jokes around. The sort of stuff that can attract links is not the sort of stuff that he wants on his website. Web directories do send the site quite a bit of traffic, I think that even without the link juice there is some benefit in being listed in them, that to me is a lot more ethical (I can't believe I just said that) then making content specifically designed to attract links that is not made for or going to be of any benefit to the people who visit his site.
To be fair, that's something that I have an issue with about link-bait as well. And that's not the kind of thing I was talking about anyway.
But, seeing as I am involved overseas and am from the UK:
and so on.
I can't see that stuff kicking it on digg or SU, I can't even see people linking to it at all.
Amazingly enough, SU and Digg aren't all you need for links. But I think we live in different worlds.
So you think people will just find the content and link to it? In any case the examples that you have provided would still not be needed for this website, if poeple want that sort of information they can find it elsewhere, this website sells Polaris World Property, that sort of information is not going to help him sell property. So other then getting links from it there is no point in him having it on his website (it is no better then the Murcia example).
No. Marketing and other forms of site promotion existed before social media.
And, as someone who is currently actively looking to buy property in Europe, one thing I know about Spain is that shoddy developers are causing problems for expat buyers because they didn't stick to local construction or environmental laws.
So it's potential news, and it's a potential problem for website buyers. Create or identify the problem and solve it.
I was also identifying interesting news/feature areas (as a former journalist and someone involved in overseas sales for a number of years) which do not necessarily have to be on the company site to garner links.
But, as I said before, we look at things from a different point of view.
David - you should post a question in Q+A on "how do I get links to this site?" We'll be sure to hop in and provide suggestions :) That's what the premium is all about!
I'll post a couple of sites that I am having problems with.
And maybe you could even thank stever for taking the time to try to answer your questions....
David - I'm not saying it isn't tough to link build for certain types of properties; it absolutely is. However, I don't think we could reasonably expect Google & Yahoo & MSN to say - "well, it's pretty tough to get links, let's just count those directories because at least we know anyone who's submitting to those is trying really hard to rank."
Think of the search engines' mission - to provide useful, relevant, ordered results. These directories, even the least spammy ones (who are still general topic, webmaster-marketed, link sellers) are NOT the kinds of links that the engines would want to count. The excuse of "sorting into relevant categories" simply isn't valuable - the engines don't need it and don't want it. They want editorial links - the kind of links that say "I, the owner of this website, vouch for the quality of content on this site I'm linking to. I would endorse it to my friends and colleagues and would do so without monetary compensation."
Tough? Yeah. But, SEO is hard and the engines want it to be hard. If paying $300 and submitting to 900 directories was all it took, we'd have some pretty awful search results.
Good point except one more line to add.
What has been recently done by Google propably does not affect your listings in less advanced search engines, Yahoo and MSN namely. They still seems to count links from banned sites, so spammers will still get around.
Instead of no. 1 in Google, they will rank no. 1 in Yahoo/MSN/others.. as long as you are getting a serious traffic for free, it does not really mean that paid directories are history.
P.S. Needless to say, that even that Google job seems to be handworked - not by algo changes - so that does not give Google such technological advance, right?
Nice post Rand. These are the people who went after PR and take a look at Directory Dump and some others that did not even bother to add some listings by their own. They are garbage and really was intended for manipulating the rankings. The big G knows how they did it plain and simple.
More directories got caught. Dirsensei Web Directory.
And Dave Eaves admission of guilt.
Thanks for your excellent post.
Shash
https://www.perfode.com
Excellent article. Clears off all controversial points.
These all web directories are good for nothing. It is just a business idea started by some people which become incredibly famous at DIGITALPOINT Forums and become a famous way of bringing the Quick Buck to the pocket.
Hats off the google. G Rocks.
Hello Rand,
Your post is excellent and you have done a great job and it is definitely a high quality expert level post.
I have visited so many web site design company site for these types of blog but I can't find this type of blog anywhere.
-Removed link
HAHAH I LOVE THIS! A SPAMMY LINK BUILDER SPAMMING A POST ON HOW NOT TO LINK BUILD!!!
Totally hilarious, what was his name? Ah Preet ..............