AdityaSpeaks

Written on September 28, 2007 – 11:40 am | by aditya |

Well its not a old news that Google - the search engine giant penalized over 100 web directory sites most of which were promoted on the DigitalPoint Forums. There was a big panic on the forum and among the web directory owners who mostly spend their whole day on DigitalPoint Forums, submitting to other directories and promoting their sites by buying each other’s signature links. Their usual business is to make directories out of a Turnkey script implementation and import SQL Dumps, make a website, buy some links and when it gets a PR in a update cycle, they start selling links on the directories under the shade of SEO Advice.

Some of the most popular web directories out there on the Forums were Alive Directory, Aviva Directory , DirectoryDump and many others most of whom now don’t even rank for their brand name. Examples -

1. http://www.google.com/search?q=AliveDirectory

2. http://www.google.com/search?q=AvivaDirectory

3. http://www.google.com/search?q=DirectoryDump

You can also notice how agitated directory owners are trying to prove that Web Directory Sites are great on DigitalPoint Forums -

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=461494

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=490256

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=490726

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=486903 (Guys suspecting that google cannot see their scam tricks)

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=469782

And endless ….

This severe action from Google agitated most of the Directory Sites Owners who started talking bad about google on the forums on various blogs and other places and also. A small list of some of the popular directories which were penalized are -

* AvivaDirectory.com
* AliveDirectory.com
* Haabaa.com
* DirectoryDump.com
* BigWebLinks.com
* ElegantDirectory.com
* eWebPages.org
* Dirsensei.com
* Trincas.org
* Dirsurfer.com

Well how can we say that they are penalized. Its just because just search for their Domain Name and they are nowhere to be found in SERPS. Example search for “AliveDirectory” on Google or say “Haabaa” on Google. This resulted in all directory websites loosing traffic suddenly.

Now the question which arises is “Why are these sites penalized ?” or “Whats Wrong with the sites ?”. There are many reasons behind this some of them are -

1. These websites are usually made for webmasters and are of no use to the end users. Most of them have very less or no traffic and some which have are usually other webmasters themselves visiting the sites.

2. The primary purpose of the directory sites is to sell links to other webmasters for Search Engine Ranking Manipulation and other SEO Benefits like PageRank

3. Anyone can get into it. I can make a site without any content or some copied articles, stuff adsense and submit to the directories and get listed there for SEO Benefit and PagreRank. The owners don’t even visit the sites to see its quality. They usually care for the payment.

4. Marketting only to webmasters. Just have a peek on the profile of some people on DigitalPoint forums and most of them have 4 directory links in their signature. Promoting thiers as well as other directory owners sites. They usually work in a network promoting each other and advicing other general webmasters to buy links on their sites for SEO purposes.

5. Most of them have been marketted with other web directories only. Open any of the above web directory sites and see the most populated category will be the “Web Directories” Category.

But Why does Google Hate These Sites ?

The answer is simple. Google wants to provide highly relevant and quality sites related to xxx when someone searches google for xxx. Now if I make a stupid crap site and submit it to 100 directories and rank high using the links, most of google users will be pissed off the site. How would it seem to a doctor searching for Information on Medicines landing upon a MFA sites. He will think Google is Crap. This hurts Google’s reputation, hence they devalued such links and penalized the sites themselves.

Even there are many occassions where it is evident that google is seriously devaluing web directory links and sites which solely depended upon them have been penalized harshly. Example

Some people still say that they are able to get top rankings with the help of web directories, and thats what google is continuoulsy trying to stop by developing new algorithms and i am sure they will soon hit some technology which will completely deindex all directories and permanently stop the Quick Buck Crew from Making Quick Money Online by scamming people under the shade of SEO Advice.