Are Web Directories Still Useful?
Before search, were directories. Intenet users instinctively know this, but a lot of us webmasters are still not so sure. Thanks to a few well coded and low priced directory scripts, there seems to be no shortage of new general web directories appearing. Most of them seem to mirror the taxonomy of DMOZ except they have only a fraction of the listings. There are even entire forums and blogs devoted to building and promoting web directories. From the user perspective, I think there is very little debate that directories resemble anything like the wave of the future.
To support my point, I’ll ask a question:
“When was the last time you opened your browser and visited a web directory to find anything?”
The exception might be niche directories, perhaps even directories with feeds or user generated content or some social media functionality.
Any objections? I rest my case.
Now, what about the usefulness of web directories for webmasters? What about the content building and organic search benefits? A quote from Nick Wilson stuck in my mind so much that I went back and Googled it up:
Many years ago, webmasters worked out that owning directories was a great way to give yourself links, get free content in way of submissions and great revenue by putting affiliate links dressed up as real listings on the pages. Google didn’t like this much, and nowadays, most directories are worthless in terms of link value because of this.
Google appears to have done some filtering of directories, souring the flavor of their link juice. You may have noticed some paid directories losing their PageRank altogether. A lot of these directories have PageRank on their main page, but when you drill down to a random category, the page is not cached by Google. Having your link on a page like that doesn’t excite many SEO’s. Subterranean billboard advertising probably wouldn’t be so great either.
Despite the improvements in search algorithms, I still see some value in running web directories, especially niche directories, if you can keep the content robust, unique and well edited and the listings of high quality. That’s not always easy. One of the most boring tasks a webmaster can perform is shuffling through the haystack of daily directory submissions to find the one guy’s a good needle.
Enough of me trying to answer the question. Let’s hear from the Google Webmaster Guidelines:
Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.
February 8th, 2007 at 12:45 am
The last time I used a web directory was in 2002….possibly sometime in early ‘03, but unlikely. I remember a month or two ago when there was some news about DMOZ having a hardware failure and some of its content lost for a while and some people were upset about it. I remember thinking “Huh? That’s still around and still a web directory? Why? And people knew it was still there?” ….web directories are just not as useful as search engines. They waste my time as a user, because I have to do the searching and that takes a lot longer than if I type a few keywords into Google and let it do the searching for me in a fraction of the time. That’s what it comes down to for me.
February 9th, 2007 at 2:06 am
From a user perspective I still see some value in directories of local content, in fact I don’t think there is enough of it. Local content is, at least in the UK, very much under utilised at the moment so it can be useful to use the local directory instead of search. Very often the search results are stuffed full of sites with pages offering services to thousands of towns that they have no chance of visiting no matter what the job they were offered. This can make finding genuine local content more difficult; although, I will concede that Google are doing a good job of trying to correct that.
March 19th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
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July 24th, 2007 at 4:57 am
Kindly furnish me the “Usefulness of blog”.
Thanks.