Do you still believe in web directory business model?

August 20, 2010

This question is asked time to time on many webmaster forums. Some still think web directories are good and essential for website promotions, but some webmasters state that web directories' time pass and the no more effective. First, what is web directory? A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. A web directory is not a search engine and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords; instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory. What types of submissions web directories are offering?
Directories have various features in listing, often depend upon the price paid for inclusion:

  • Free submission - there is no charge for the review and listing of the site
  • Reciprocal link - a link back to the directory must be added somewhere on the submitted site in order to get listed in the directory
  • Paid submission - a one-time or recurring fee is charged for reviewing/listing the submitted link
  • No follow - there is a rel="nofollow" attribute associated with the link, meaning search engines will give no weight to the link.
  • Featured listing - the link is given a premium position in a category (or multiple categories) or other sections of the directory, such as the homepage. Sometimes called sponsored listing.

A few words about history, what web directories were a decade(s) ago. When search engines were not so sophisticated as they are today, very often people searched web directories to find what they were looking for. A decades ago web directories were vital source for internet searchers, as well as for search engines. Search engines gave importance to web directories, rank them well and gave them good SERP position. As WWW become more popular and more websites created, the competition rose as well. Webmasters were looking for the ways to improve their website positioning in a search results. The Google phenomenon change search engine history. The Google PageRank changed the way search engines judged websites, making decision more democratic. For search term, the related and more popular websites returned first. Popular, meaning higher PR (PageRank). The more pages linking to your page, the higher PR your page is getting. The higher PR, the better position your page gets in SERP. All that created new industry to promote websites, called SEO - Search Engine Optimization. Link building become one of most important steps in SEO. Many websites rose offering services to send traffic, exchange links, sell links, link wheels and etc. web directories become one of them biggest resources in link building. People submitted their websites to as many web directories as possible. That created huge demand on web directories and number of web directories started to grow rapidly. As technology become more advanced, many ready to go standard web directories were offered and for very affordable price. Also automatic submission tools were developed to create bulk submission process. Webmasters were offered to pay for services which will submit their websites to 1000's web directories. All that created:
1) a lot of junk directories
2) a lot of duplicate content
3) tricked the whole idea of page rank
As result, web directories become #1 resource for SEO, but lost importance in search engine eyes. In addition Google learn that they cannot rely on PR as they did, and PR importance also went down.

As years past, the interest in web directories from SEO specialists and webmaster rapidly grow, as well as number of: web directories, web directories lists, web directories for web directories.

But at the same time the interest from internet users constantly going down:

So, then answer to the question: Are web directories still useful? The answer is depends who you asking. If you ask SEO specialists, they will tell you YES they are. If you ask regular visitors, most likely they will respond with NO.

The survival instinct, transformed web directories to change their business. Many niche directories were created as well as article and ezine web directories. Some websites still receiving very solid traffic from web directories, but that traffic decreases and replaced by traffic from search engines.

Since web directories mainly used as SEO technique to increase PR, as soon as page rank will be available to webmasters, the web directories will be around too.