The directory industry got some good news of late  as Google decided to let a bunch of directories out of the penalty box.  Most of these directories spent over 2 years in the sin bin.

History

In the past, Google has periodically penalized individual sites.  In September and October of 2007 they hit a large number of web directories.  The sites in question had their PR dropped to zero.  These sites did not appear in the top 40 rankings of Google‘s search results, not even for their own domain.  For example, a directory called abc.com did not appear in the top 40 in a search for abc.

 Today

Today’s analysis is based on a list of directories that received Google penalties back in September & October 2007.  I have updated the list with their current PageRank. As for PageRank, I would have to say that it has recovered well. It is very close to the level it was before the reduction. In many cases, it is a point or two lower but this can be explained by the fact that the owners were not motivated to promote these directories over the last couple of years. These sites also lost many links because of the penalties.

The table below is a subset of the directories involved.  For a more complete view follow the link above.

I admit that I have not followed most of these sites closely over the last 2 years so if you have anything to add I would be grateful for your comments.  Thanks.

There is nothing inherently wrong with .info Directories. The problem is how they have been abused by certain people in the directory industry. .info domains can be registered for about $1 for the first year but future years cost around $10 per year. A high percentage of .info directories disappear before their 2nd year. The subject was discussed recently at DP forum.

Here are some of the funnier comments.

these nutcases are buying the domains in bulk and churning directories like bunnies

cheap domains for cheap directories. nothing new here. quick buck crew trying to create an empire of poop!

.info Directories = I’m a moron following the moron ahead of me into failure.

The only difference between *.info and rest is that 99% of the *.info directories will be dead in 1 year. Other than that there is no difference.

Today a directory owner admitted to owning 2500 directories. So, someone pays a buck for a .info domain, uses a free script, a dump of categories and hosts a wad of them on the same server. They have created a network of identical, poor quality directories on a couple of IPs. The problem is that a small proportion of these (if any) will be around in a year or two.

I pity people with legitimate .info directories. They will be prejudiced because of the color of their extension.

Is it possible that the .info behavior can harm all directories. You bet! 

Should we do something about it.  Yes we should!

There are way too many directories with the exact same categories.  Over the last 3 months I estimate that 9 out of 10 new general directories are using the same category dump.  The result is a slew of low quality directories.

Here is an example of one of these directories.  You will recognize it because the first 5 categories are: Arts, Blogs, Business, Computers and Education.

Here is an example of Arts sub-category.

There are over a thousand of these directories on the web.  This is not the only dump that people use but it is by far the one used the most.

Owners usually create a dozen or two of these exact directories.  Sometimes they create a hundred or two.  To make things worse, they often host all the directories on the same IP.

Advice to anyone starting a directory

Create one good directory rather than a dozen crappy ones. Create some original categories and try to build some original content. The more useful the content is the better. Good luck.

We have just updated our list of Free Deep Link Directories  over on our sister site Best-Web-Directories.com.  For the first time, this list has directories that have approved our submissions.  These are directories that have approved our submissions over the last 2 weeks from our deep link submission service.  There are 60  free general directories on the list.

Deep links are backlinks to internal pages of your site.  We feel that these are important as natural growth of links would have both links to your homepage and links to your internal pages.

Web-Directories.ws has reached the 13,000 directory listing mark. We have reached this mark despite our effort to concentrate on quality rather than quantity. For many months the size of the database actually shrunk as we deleted hundreds of directories that were parked. We had to do a manual review as most of these do not get kicked out when we use the automated tool to validate links. We attacked the listings in various manual and automated manners to clean it up. The information is as current as it will ever get.

Just this week we added an additional 300 free directories to raise the total to 3000 free directories. We also added over a hundred article directories.

Over the last year we have added thousands of new niche and regional directories. These seem to be doing well based on our latest Pagerank statistics.

I would like to thank our increasing loyal users who send in directory reports to identify inappropriate and mis-categorized directories. Thank you and I hope to hear from you.

Here is a new list of directory submission services. The list outlines the most popular manual submission services along with the sites that rank highest in Google for the term “directory submissions service”. The table provides useful information like the the types of packages offered and their price ranges, and how long they have been in the directory submission business.

Not all submission services are created equal. These are some of the better, most trustworthy one around. Directory submission can be an easy and inexpensive SEO tool but you are putting a bit of trust in the company you choose. You always want to stay in Google’s good books. Personally, I would stay away from the ones that will submit your site to over 500 directories. I know that there are not that many good free directories out there that are still approving free submissions.

We have just updated our list of Directories that Accept Free Deep Links over at Best-Web-Directories.com. There are over 150 free general directories that allow deep link submission for free.

It has taken a lot of hard work, but Web-Directories.ws has gone over 12,000 directory listing mark.  Of note, the site now has over 2700 free directories.  The information is as current as it will ever get.

The most work occurs with keeping the information up-to-date.  There is a constant review of the material along with different automated checks.    I must thank the increasing loyal users who send in directory reports to identify inappropriate and mis-categorized directories.  Thank you.

Directory PageRank Statistics

Here are updated statistics after Google’s year end PageRank update.  The stats were compiled from our database of almost 12,000 web directories.

Some of the statistics are interesting. Overall the PR number for directories have increased.  On the other hand, the number of PR0 and -1 (NA) directories have also increased.   Over the long-run, I would say that PageRank has been pretty stable over the last year.

Factors that may affect these numbers:

• Most of our submissions that we get come from brand new directories, meaning that we are constantly adding new PR0 and N/A to our database.
• I often go out of my way to add large networks of directories that are stored on the same IP (so that I don’t add them later without knowing their IP associations.  More often than not these directories are still N/A or PR0 years after being created.  I’m not sure if it something Google does or if it the fact that each individual directory is not really marketed much.  It looks like Google is cracking down on these as I often see large blocks of NA PR when I do the updates.
• Since many of the directories are add by the editor of this site, the results cannot be considered random.  The results of any given date can be skewed by the types of directories that were added in the previous 3 months.  These statistics are more useful when looking at a long-term trends.

I signed up Host Gator to host this site in February of 2008, after hearing good things about them from a wide array of people. The directory has over 10,000 records and because of it’s size and number of users. has had problems with a couple of hosts. One just canceled my service without even notifying me. See my Host from Hell post.

When I signed up I noticed that they had an affiliate program. I thought of joining but I wondered if I heard so many good things because people were affiliates. I decided to wait until I new more about the service they provide. Well, after almost 10 months I can say that I am happy with their service.  Over this time I have had a couple of hiccups but they were quite good to work with.  They helped me work things out and it turned out that the problems were with my customized version of  the PHPLD software.  The newer versions can be resource hogs if the cache is not working optimally.   They have quite a bit of PHPLD directory clients and work with them to correct problems.  Their support staff are very good. The support staff at PHPLD have worked with them in the past and have had good results.

They have been offering hosting since 2002 and claim to be hosting over 1,300,000 domains.  They offer a wide range of packages.  I have worked with over 20 hosting companies over the years.  I now realize that cheapest is not always the best.  I have heard some pretty lame excuses for down time.  If your site is important to you then I recommend Host Gator.