fair enough

One unfortunate occurence that happened in the directory industry is some people bought their way to the top. They bought high pagerank links to boost the pagerank of their directory, and then they made a lot of money in the short term selling links, only to see their site penalized by google a few months later. But before that happened, many others tried to follow this same path, and some failed. As a result, there are a good number of "general"-type directories that are not very well maintained. Fortunately, we are not seeing this type of activity so much these days.

Now, you are seeing more niche and regional directories, and the general directories that are thriving are well maintained and have done something to set themselves apart from the others. So fortunately, the growth we are seeing in the directory industry is healthier. People are producting higher quality sites in their niche. The industry is starting to mature, and I'm really glad to see this.

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PHP Link Directory - start a directory and start making money
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This is the closest you have ever got to pointing a finger at the Culture Club that catapulted your scripts into the position they hold. A bold move seeing as they are still around and are no doubt still prospering. You know and I know and we all should know that it was not the scammers and spammers that got nailed in the fire fight with Google. They were almost expecting it. They had the padding to take the blows. It was people with high hopes and little else that lost their wherewithal. I see that Alive Directory is still around and he is still strutting his stuff despite all the water under the bridge. Is this one of your "well maintained" general directories? Has he cleaned out all the professional MFA he was carrying the last time I looked? What happened to the other member of that dastardly duo? What was his name?
Bullshit. PR trading is still alive and well and directories are still the most cost effective source of one way back links. What as changed? When are we going to face up to the real dynamics in this industry and start addressing the core problem which is the type of content which should never appear in the search results and which directory masters are getting paid to list?

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Whats Google Friendly? Whats not?

I guess I am late to the party... but I agree.
I am going to do a group of 10 backlink directories for my niche area estate and probate lawyers. I am thinking out charging $19.97 a month for 10 sites. Does that sound like a good idea?

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probate info | suffolk county probate attorney

You are mixing two very different business models. You are charging a premium for a listing in a niche "traffic generating" directory. And there is nothing wrong with this if you have the presence within the industry to generate and deliver the service you are charging for. But I suspect you still have a lot of groundwork to cover and what I would do is to set up ten blogs with a general directory attached to each. I would then use the blogs to community build within my niche and I would get them positioned on the search engines so that they complement the work of the directory.

I would also offer to review submissions from other webmasters wanting to list their sites on your ten general directories. We charge $5 once off for a review and you have to understand that Back Links are not traffic. This is a low value high volume asset and this is where we hit a problem last year. The industry was hijacked by a couple of fast talking, ultra smooth operators who talked up the value of their sites to the point where it morphed into a house of cards which Google took a stab at. However despite the mess they made very little has changed and we are still teetering and tottering on the verge of oblivion.

Fact: When Google decides it can no longer tolerate the junk being churned out by dvduval's mates, this industry will die overnight. Spread you bets. Do everything you can think of to get organic links. This is a fools paradise.

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Whats Google Friendly? Whats not?

rainchild or rainman.. hrmm

regardless, don't let your ager consume you.

This is where we need to start. We need to recognise that ninety nine percent of directories are used by spiders and the spiders only. They are a source of back links and if directory masters make themselves useful to Google and the other search engines we might just make it through.
No anger. But it is a consuming process of change. In our case we are running a workshop where we charge to review submissions to our directories. We use whatever we make to cover the costs of creating a "real live" web site as a front end. The difficulty here however is finding people who actually want to run a "Mom & Pop" type business. Talk internet to them and they start dashing all over the place and the ideas they come up with get crazier and crazier. But its happening slowly. I for one sure as hell hope that they don't kill directories off just yet.

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Whats Google Friendly? Whats not?

I been away building a bunch of mini-sites and decided to bum around a bit tonight. I see the same discussions continue. I am hard headed and and appear to be bucking the trend. My extremely niche directory is coming along nicely. Went live last March and received 99 uniques. This month looks like it might hit 700 (I know that is small time) which is better than I expected. No fees and no linkbacks required. Gets some Adsense income but not much. I get a bit tired deleting the spam submissions but dats life in the slow lane. Am committed to the project long term and the fact that big G granted me a pr2 was a surprise.

On the other hand I just brought up a rummy (free script) directory today mostly to throw mini-sites at and see if anything sticks. BTW an example of one of my mini-sites is Lot of Shoes or Java Junction. Not world shattering but I don't use the commercial content scrapers for my sites. It is all a shot in the dark - some fail and some work well enough that big G sends me a nice little note every month. Oh yes I also don't do arbitrage or buy Adwords.

I know that is off directory topic but... I just gave myself 10 lashes with a piece of thread.