Directory Spy

Well, as you may or may not know, Google has posted an update to their index, which from what I’ve seen has had mixed reviews.

For this site, we dropped from a page rank 5 to a page rank 3 (ouch, that hurts).

In the course of analyzing the drop, I’ve reached a few conclusions/guesses:

SCENARIO ONE
1. I’ve not done a good job of creating unique, relevant content, and the site has been rightfully punished.
2. I’ve lost readers, and popularity, and I’ve been rightfully punished.

SCENARIO TWO
1. The sites that link to me have bad page rank, or are of questionable quality.
2. I’m being punished for the sites I relate with.

The purpose of this post is to think out loud, and to share with you why it is I think that my page rank dropped, and what I am going to do to fix it.

I’ve already talked about creating niche directories with quality content, and I’m personally working on that.

I have a fundamental question, which needs asking: What do you expect from DirectorySpy? Perhaps you could post some comments and tell me what you want, need or would like to see covered here?

In the meantime, I’ll continue to report to you what I find as well as work to restore what’s been lost.

Best to all!

I’ve been reading with some interest the debate going on over at Webmaster World in regards to Google and Open Directory RDF..

Apparently DMOZ has not had some portions of it’s directory updated in some time, and that’s leading to questions as to what Google will index and what it won’t.. perhaps old content, or not update content will simply be left out of Google’s index altogether. Frankly, I’m certain that no one knows really what’s on Google’s mind.

The most interesting comment was a person making an observation about directories not being ‘authoritative’ for their topic, and that the best (or only) possible future for a Directory (open or other) will be to restrict the amount of directory additions (listings) that a site takes, in the hopes of staying very on topic (keep only related sites within your directory), write articles that are also within the topic of your directory.. and to that I agree.

One person even went as far as to say:

“I don’t think directories have much of a future, except for directories that add value in the form of editorial content.”

And to that I wholeheartedly disagree. While it’s true that a lot of directories really aren’t much more than link farms, quite a few directories actually fill a niche or void not covered by other search engines.

So, if ‘content is king’ (as they say), then on topic content is master of the universe…

I’m not only going to continue development on my directories, but focus on providing better on-topic content and probably not try to be the ‘all knowing’ directory. Pick a niche, fill it, and do it better than any one else out there, and I’m convinced you’ll have a site worthy of traffic.

Until next time..

Scott

Hey gang,

As promised, I’m posting my experience with www.goingup.com so far.. and, as I said above ’so far, so good’.

They’ve done a really nice job of unobtrusively tracking stats, as you can see here:

As you can also see, my stats are dropping, so I need to get busy with fresh content!

I’ll be back soon with more.. until then, happy Directory Building!

I’ve had an opportunity to see ‘behind the curtain’ at a new web analytics offering, and I have to say - This is a must have (I’ll be adding it to the Spy here shortly).

The service is called ‘GoingUp!‘, and it’s a pretty nifty web analytics package. The free version comes with 1000 hits (traffic counts) per month, and offers all kinds of stats, from daily counts to monthly trends.

The basic service is completely free, so if you’re looking for a tracking service to help you keep an eye on your directory performance, then you owe it to yourself to give this a try.

Paid features include ‘actions’ to track things like sales, url clicks or other that you wish to record, as well as as SEO tracking of keywords, placement and also density. Pretty nifty.

I’m working on a price discount with these guys, in order to get us a reduced rate for their advanced analytics. I’ll post an update as soon as I get an answer.

I’ll be GoingUp! soon!

Hi everyone!

I’m Scott, the new owner of this site, taking over where Dan left off..

I’ll be adding new mods and other directory specific content, so please book mark this site (or even better, subscribe) so that I can keep you up to date on all the new happenings around here.

Who am I? I’m a tech and internet addict, php junkie and general computer freak, with a particular interest in Directories, so I’m pretty excited about acquiring the DirectorySpy. My other site, CalendarScript, is also a favorite hangout for me.

So, if you can’t find me here, head on over there.. but in any case, drop me a line, say ‘hello’, and lets talk! I’d love to hear from you!

Best,

Scott

I do try to practice what I preach when I say that directories should be different and stand out from the rest. I’ve recently written a mod for Moon Directory that lists all of the categories in the directory that have a Google Page Rank value greater than 0. This allows buyers interested in page ranking to quickly find the most appropriate category with the highest ranking.

The graphic above shows the menu with a summary of what categories are available. Clicking on one of them takes the user to a summary page of all categories with the the chosen page rank value. The categories are sorted in order of their top-level category, then sub-level categories. The admin mod uses a concept similar to the phpLD PR Update Tool, but related to categories and an extra splash of magic too!

Theoretically, I could have a payment model that charges more for the high PR categories, and less for the lower PR categories. If I had a PR5 directory with PR4 categories (as opposed to a PR4 directory with PR3 categories) I would probably raise my prices, but would keep prices lower for the lower ranking categories to encourage link purchases from link buyers with low budgets.

I’ve been noticing that Alexa rankings have been growing in popularity as ways to rate a directory for traffic. Google Page Rank is a metric that relates to inbound and outbound link counts. Alexa rankings are heavily biased on visitors who have the Alexa Toolbar installed. Therefore if you are selling advertising space based on traffic, having a low Alexa ranking (i.e. loads of traffic), then this will help you to command a good price.

There are many ways to increase your Alexa rank, such as displaying the Alexa widget on your directory such as the one below. Apparently if a visitor clicks on this widget, it counts as traffic to your site even if they don’t have a toolbar.

Using the Alexa redirection (e.g. http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.directoryspy.com) will count a single ip address as a visitor. If you use this for older posts, and possible for internal linking, then you can quickly increase your ranking with very little effort. For internal linking, you’d probably want to use some code to do the hard work for you.

Another tip is to use the traffic auto-surf exchange type systems. I imagine most are dodgy, but I’ve been researching UpMyRank for a while now, and it’s already working to boost one of my websites (not Directory Spy). Any script that runs from a single ip address is a sure fire way to getting banned. UpMyRank is almost a peer to peer traffic exchange. It’s definitely worth giving them a shot.

For a few more tips, I’ve found this fantastic article on DoshDosh with 20 quick ways to increase your Alexa rank.

If you’re doing something interesting in the directory world, then please let me know! I’ll blog about what you’re doing on Directory Spy completely free. But there is a small catch, it must be interesting and unique!

Perhaps you have:

• An interesting mod that you wrote (e.g. I wrote the phpLD PR Update Tool)
• You have some clever features on your directory
• You have an amazing directory design
• You target a peculiar niche in your directory (e.g. I have a spy gadgets directory).
• Or anything else that’s directory related?

Please comment on this post with your cool directory ideas!

Prashanth Nair (dotcompals) offers a unique directory submission service. Prashanth will submit your website details to to all the new free SEO-friendly, non reciprocal directories announced on the major webmaster forums such as Digital Point and DirectoryCritic.com.

The service allows you to suggest multiple anchor texts and descriptions, and you get a Google spreadsheet report updated daily allowing you to see what directories your sites have been submitted to. You can also get discounts for multiple orders too! The service costs $20 per month per website. I’ve been using it for a long time now, and I seriously recommend this service!

Prashanth submits your site to any new directories within 24 hours of them being announced. Since these are new directories, the chance that your listing will be accepted is very high. This quickly gains you solid backlinks to your website. Some directories grow to be very popular, and so the strength of your links grow over time too!

This is a very cost effective way of promoting your website. Even if you get only 50 backlinks a month, that’s still only 40 cents a link!

It was only a matter of time before someone created a Digg for Directories, but it’s actually a good thing in my opinion. Digg for Directories already features over 1000 web directories, and the most popular are already working themselves to the top of the list, such as Directory Dump, V7N, Seven Seek and Aviva.

You can easily digg your favourite directories by clicking on the vote tab. If you want to submit your own directory, then registering takes a few seconds, after which you can submit your sites.

Perhaps other directory related sites might be permitted in the near future? I would be keen to get Directory Spy listed on the site too. Once it’s been made easier to put the voting code on the directories themselves, I can imagine Digg for Directories will explode in popularity. And then onedollar will make a fortune in advertising revenue. Nicely done!