Goodbye Web Directory

…Hello News Content

I’ve been wanting to make this post for a while to explain my thinking on web directories and what happened to the Clickfire webmaster directory. Like many webmaster resources sites in the Web 1.0 days, a big part of Clickfire became the webmaster resources directory. It was a nice way to promote the sites and tools of fellow webmasters while expanding Clickfire with user generated content. The mission statement:

The Clickfire Webmaster Directory is our collection of over 1000 webmaster resources, submit directories, graphics sites, IT certification links, scripts and software download links, promotion resources and web design and search engine optimization resources. Our goal is to provide a high quality webmaster directory for Clickfire visitors. We actively seek professional, content-rich webmaster resource sites that offer helpful products or services to webmasters, web designers, marketers and web hosts, and especially sites that offer free and helpful resources. If you have a webmaster resource that sounds like the above, please add it to our webmaster directory. If approved, the link will appear soon. A big thanks to all fellow webmasters who have linked to Clickfire!

But, during the last several years, a lot has happened with directories in organic search, a lot that ain’t good. I won’t go into the whys, but I’ll just say what you already know; the future of the web is not directories. I dug up this entry from an old Clickfire webmaster newsletter:

It seems that every webmaster site has added a directory these days. A quality directory can be great instrument to get to know other webmasters, exchange links, and build content for your site. We added this several months ago and needless to say, I’ve become a fan of owning quality resource directories. The neat thing is that others actually add their content to your site in the form of a link, title, and description of the features their site offers. You give them the exposure and link and you get content for your own visitors. Visitors help you do the work. You approve only the sites that you want included in your directory. There are several good directory scripts available on the Internet. Some of these scripts are free or have a functional, but scaled down free version.

During this time the Clickfire directory script I was using crashed. For long time, I 302 redirected the directory to the main page.  I decided to rethink the whole directory thing. Does a ten year old Web site really need something as archaic as a web directory? Did I want it? Directory owners were starting to charge. How could I keep it free? I loathe the idea of charging our visitors for anything. Do directories even matter anymore? Why am I doing this? I ended up installing some iteration of PHP Link Directory. I never made it live. As time went on, I lost interest in the whole directory model and became more interested in other things like blogging and social media. I realized it was over.

Observations
One thing about owning a web directory is that you get to see a lot of broken dreams. There were over 1500 listings at one time. After a thorough pruning the number dropped to around 1100. So many people build sites, submit and promote them and boom… next thing you know they are 404. I wondered what had happened to make them stop running their site they once promoted, if some tragic event had taken place in their lives. Were they sick? A car accident? Dead? Were they working in a brick and mortar somewhere? Maybe they just moved on.

Another thing is that many people abuse directories through SPAM or deception. Most submissions I received completely ignored the guidelines I’d worked to develop. Autosubmitters were filling my directory full of submissions, mostly with new sites trying to get those first links. If I didn’t check my submissions for a week, I might have to spend 20 minutes going through junk to find that one submitter who followed the rules and contributed quality content.

What Now?
I’ve been thinking about the value of publishing news for quite some time. For publishers, news is like a product. News carries value for every niche. Everyone consumes news every day. On a personal level, I realized that reading news about the topics I enjoy has been an important part of my life since childhood. I still remember stories from the newspaper, television and radio that stuck with me as I grew up. I love news.

I’ve decided to develop Clickfire News as resource for anyone to submit news of interest to Internet surfers and Webmasters. So, instead of plugging in your site’s link with a title and description, now you have to come up with an interesting news story about your site or product. It will take a bit more time and thought but the end result is that you get link attribution back to your site from within a valuable news story.

If you were listed in the old Clickfire webmaster resources directory, submit a news story about your company or site. If it’s decent, we’ll gladly publish it on our news area.

Update - Fellow Atlanta SEO blogger, Brian Ussery noticed that Google has removed the following directory submission phrase 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.”