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

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!

I’ve decided that I need to prune my network of websites a little so that I can focus on my favourite websites. The first of my sites to be sold is my SpyOnMe niche directory. It’s got great potential as a spy and security directory, but I just have not had the time to exploit it.

If you’re interested, you can read the full description of the site, with its statistics and its potential in the Digital Point Forums for the SpyOnMe Directory forsale thread.

I’ve changed the theme for Directory Spy to make it easier to read and support wide browser windows. This essentially makes it more user friendly!

What do you think? Would love to hear your comments!

Thank you to all of my recent donations! They are very much appreciated. Thank you to my latest two donors, Hitflip Media Trading GmbH and Femi Hasani. You can see everyone who has donated on my donations page.

I’ve been working on the newest version of the PR updater mod. It currently supports phpLD V2.10, V3.06, and V3.10. I still need to sort out documentation and beta testing. But looks great already!