Although our social bookmark list has been around for many years we have just spent the last couple of weeks upgrading our  list.
- we have added about 600 new social bookmark sites.
- we have gone through the list and removed hundreds of sites that were no longer applicable.

As a result, here is our list of general social bookmark sites.  There are currently over a thousand bookmark listings.

There are actually 1300 social media sites listed on web-directories.ws.  We have broke down the social media into general, niche and regional lists.  There is also a Twitter directory list.

Hope it helps.   Comments are always welcome.

We have just completed a a big update to legal / lawyer directory list. The list has grown from 150 to 400 listings. The information will never be as current as it is now.

In order to improve the usability of the list we created a number of new categories. The lawyer / attorney category now has USA, Canadian and UK sub-categories.

One of the goals of growing the list was to offer an attorney directory submission service. We are going to start by offering the service for United States attorneys, as they have the most directories. We will then look at extending the service if we can find enough free applicable directories.

If you have any suggestions or quetions, please add a comment below.

Since 2006, Best Web Directories has been helping thousands of webmasters gain popularity and traffic to their sites through our link building services. Now we are moving one step further by offering a writing service to make your site stand out with quality informative content.

Best Web Directories is happy to introduce a new Content Writing Service, which will give your readers a unique reading experience that they haven’t yet experienced in cyber space, hooking them to each word and each sentence of your site.

Before Google Panda update, any site could be ranked well, provided that the webmaster knew all the tricks in the book about Search Engine Optimization. However, web users were disappointed with all the trash coming up. The information they got was poor and repeated. This prompted Google to come up with the Panda algorithm update.

Since the update, webmasters can no longer just rely on search engine optimization techniques to rank their sites. Google is making sure that the content is worthwhile and relevant to the user. What Google is looking for is quality and uniqueness of the content. Content has begun to take center stage.

We at Best Web Directories know exactly what Google means. We have put together a team of great writers to come with the best content for your site.

Quality Content means well researched and well written articles. You need experts to write content that can pass Google’s litmus test. Our team of writers helps you to do exactly that. We provide quality content that is unique, user friendly and relevant to your site. Our experts make sure that the content is well researched and written to attract the maximum readers.

With our unique Content / Article Writing Service your can capture the attention of a wide audience giving you the traffic you want. We will write content for your site, blog post or articles. Have an article written for 4 cents are word – less for large articles. Volume discounts are available.

Here is a video where Matt Cutts explains how Google updates it’s Pagerank metric.

Here is a post from Matt Cutts’ blog  where he explains PageRank updates.

A lot of people have been wondering what has happened to their little green bar, AKA PageRank.  People have been reporting that all websites are showing NA.

The good news is that PageRank is alive and well.  Just check the Google toolbar on Internet Explorer.   Google has change the way third-party tools can access PR.   Consequently, many tools and websites are not correctly reporting PR.

All should be well once your tool or site updates their script to access Google PR using the new format.

Curious:   Why hasn’t Google updated it’s toolbar for the last 3 versions of Firefox.  They have not updated the toolbar since version 4.  The latest Firefox version is 7.

Back in February Matt Cutts of Google and Harry Shum of Microsoft squared off at a search conference. In case you missed it, Google did a test and planted some fake results.  The results then ended up on Bing.  In defense, Shum got personal and started attacking Matt and Google.

Here is a good post that takes the highlights of the discussions. http://www.businessinsider.com/bing-copies-google-fight-2011-2

 Here is a post from Matt’s blog where he shows some of the queries in question.

I have noticed similarity in my rankings in Google and MSN/Bing rankings for years. Nothing concrete but they seemed to follow each other up or down. It looks to me that Microsoft got caught red handed and didn’t help their case or their company’s integrity with their response.

Shawn Hogan recently  laid out his side of the Ebay story, telling of his role as an affiliate going way back to 2004. If Shawn is innocent then it is good hear him put up some type of defense.  So many people are quick to convict without caring about the details. On first read, I was able to say that the story is plausible. You have to remember that Shawn was a smart kid that made some innovative decisions (mostly on the technical side).  It is not as if he was a head of a giant corporation with a bunch of advisers.

On the other hand, some of the story is a little hard to believe. Based on the story, we should probably nominate Shawn for a Nobel prize. It will be interesting to see if the story can stand up to cross-examination. Ebay’s reputation will take a hit if even part of it can be proven in court.  I get the feeling that we will get a better idea of how they conducted business.

Read his post on the DigitalPoint blog

Note to self: I finally understand why Google cracked down on the rankings of affiliate sites. The affiliates could do the dirty work without the main site risking Google penalties.

Some Background Info:

June 24, 2010 – Shawn Hogan indicted by the FBI with wire fraud and criminal forfeiture.  Here is a copy of the indictment.  He has  been released on bail.

Aug 25, 2008 – Ebay files lawsuit. See Digitalpoint Forum and Shawn Hogan Sued by EBay for Cookie Stuffing

Google now offers a safe browsing API. The API allows client apps to check URLs against Google’s blacklists of suspected phishing and malware pages. Your client application can download an encrypted table for local, client-side lookups of bad URLs.

Here is a link to the Safe Browsing API. 

Below are our latest PageRank stats, compiled from the database behind list of 16,000 directories. The last 2 weeks have been spent updating and cleaning up the directories in the list. We used a combination of various automated methods along with good old fashioned manual checks. We have recently checked thousands of the directories manually and got rid of quite a few sites that we not appropriate for the list. We are proud to say that the list is in the best shape that it has ever been, especially the free and article categories.

 P.S.  A big thanks to David at PHPLD for providing a new version of his PR updater.

Directory PageRank Stats as of Apr 20, 2010

Directory PageRank have been very strong over that last 5 Google PR updates. Google has recently removed penalties to a bunch of directories.   The following table compares PageRank in our database, showing percentage changes between February and April of 2010.  Overall, the outlook for directories seems to be better than it has for years.

 Percentage Change Since Last Update

Factors that may have affected these numbers:

• Since many of the directories are added by the editor of this site, the directories included are not 100% random. The results of any given date can be skewed by the types of directories that were added in the previous period. Of late,  we have concentrated on adding niche and regional directories.
• We have stopped adding most .info general directories.  Also, we have recently stopped adding most of the  large networks of directories hosted on the same IP.   In the past, we purposely added these directories to identify them.  In the last year, the task has become insurmountable as someone is always adding another 50-70 .info directories.  These directories usually disappear within a year or two.  We do add the .info that are submitted to us manually.

As a result of the factors above, the above stats should be used to identify long-term trends in the directory industry.

Google updated it’s toolbar PageRank on or around April 3rd.  So far, everything looks extremely good for directories.  From my observations, directory PR is continuing to rise.  Stay tuned for the more complete stats.

I am in the process of updating the directory list.  Unfortunately, the script I am using is still reporting thousands of false N/As so I have to go through the list manually.  If you see incorrect PR after today please report it.  Thanks .