Directory industry’s biggest mistake (Are there more to come?)
It was about a year and a half ago, I launched my directory (idk.in) which turned out to be a success when I sold it for $20,000 USD. Not long after I launched my directory, a concept of bidding directory gained alot of fame among the directory owners. One of the reasons were because it seemed to do very good for some of the bigger directory owners. Chris also known as mystikmedia, owner of the famous Alive Directory launched his first Bidding Web Directory with a name of bigweblinks.com, which got $20,136 USD from the links submitted to in on the homepage. Now, Chris was promoting his sites greatly and this site got a PR 7. Alot of directory owners took a stab at this option and thinking they will make easy money also. Well along with other web directory owners, Chris himself launched a few more of these bidding directories. But this post is not about Chris, or bidding directories. But it is about a concept behind the bidding directories which played an important role in the demise of directory industry.
While the directory industry is not dead right now because you can still make money from a general web directory. Sadly not many of these webmasters are catching the mistake and keep on making it over and over again. This mistake is Auto Approve added in the directories, or you can call it Instant Approval like Bruce of Authority Directory calls it.
This feature was introduced and made popular in the famous bidding directory script, phpLinkBid also known as phpLB. Now this is the biggest mistake of the directory industry. I am not saying that Google got angry because of the bidding directories because alot of general directories got penaltised due to their promotion techniques of buying links on other sites, but this concept itself just goes on to show that a directory is a peice of trash where everyone can throw in their links and write whatever they want.
All Directory Owners, should stay away from auto-approval. While it will save you some time, but it will cause your directory’s quality to suffer, and directories will be considered another paid links. Right now it is not because most directory owner/editors are charging for paid reviews. They review each site individually and its a review fee that the advertiser is paying them. If the site passes the criteria of the editor, then it gets included. So it is not a paid link. But by adding this method into scripts, and sites doesn’t give you any advantage but can harm you.
Eventhough I never favored bidding directories, but anyone who asked me which script to use to start a bidding directory. I said phpLD Bidding directory by the people who brought the famous phpLinkDirectory script to us. The main reason for that was because it doesn’t do auto-approve. It will let the user bid, but the editors have to approve the site and then it will appear.
Now I am keeping a close eye at the directory industry and staying in touch with some of my friends who owns directories. I still recommend people to submit their sites to directories, but not to ones which does auto-approve. If you want to know how to determine a quality web directory read my most where I set a guideline and give you a list of my favorites.
Hopefully directory owners and script developers will take this point seriously and not implement this feature in their sites/scripts.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
This is excellent Syed. Glad to see you posting on directory topics occasionally. You got it right though it is more correctly called auto approval. The reason I chose to use instant approval is that is how I see it referred to more and wanted to target that keyword. That way anyone searching for one of these sites would stand a better chance of seeing my post also.
Well hopefully this post and the link back will get you some rank bump
Great post.. I really have to tell that i myself have experimented things about web directories like general, bidding etc. and finally could just see that the directory world is not where it was. But its levels are lowered a lot due to some crappy directories being made everyday only for the benefit of the directory owner, not of the end user.
I think kudos go out to anyone who tries something new and innovative, whether it succeeds or fails. So, I think Chris is to be congratulated for BigWebLinks.com and I know that he runs this directory with more integrity than 99.9% of the directories out there.
I don’t think bidding directories in theory need to be bad – even Google displays paid results at the top of its organic results and these are results are ordered approximately by the amount bid.
I have seen niche bidding directories work. In these sort of directories, the editor proactively lists all the websites in the niche and any site that meets editorial standards is listed for free. Then, you can bid to improve your placement.
That being said, in practice, most bidding directories (and even non-bidding directories) are nothing but link dumps. Auto / instant approval is obviously a joke. What makes a directory a quality resource is the editing; with auto / instant approval there is none.
The way you described about adding every site that is related for free and then let them bid to get the top spot is a great idea, but how many of the bidding directories are working like that. I haven’t seen one.
Yeah, I go with Jeff on the idea that kudos to everyone who tries out an idea but I have to agree with Syed that after a while when you have over saturated a market with the same non-innovative idea it starts to get dull.
I would have to agree with syed, i really havent seen any directories that work as off letting the competitions bid gaisnt them selfs for the top spot even though it sounds like an great idea.
I also have to approve with your opinion on directories its really not what it used to be a year ago, when they were actually in line to be one of profit making websites.But now they have just ruined the name of directories, sure there are some good old ones left out their, but most of them are just made up to get quick bucks and thats all.
Bidding directories was a big mistake
Well, it depends which way you look at it. If it helps you make money then why not?
I too think the same frd … Link on BID dir are a NO NO for me … general paid review dirs are still OK but do not submit to Bid dirs.
bigweblinks is now PR 0 … majority of the BIG PR dirs are broke down … and i never recommend to have a link on Bid dir as its penalised and can get our site penalised by G too.
well few dirs have tried maintain their PR to not much less … but still the inner category PR are also dropped.
i got few dirs with homepage PR 3 and few inner categories with PR 2 and PR 1
This time i came out with a Pet Directory
http://www.drpet.in
Let me know how you find it!
This looks very good
Thanks syed bhai!
Do help me in promoting it please
Will do my best
Auto approve directories are horrible. The links to these directories gets passed around like a…, well, I won’t go there.
There are also a number of free directory networks that are using one DB for multiple directories. This is yet another black eye to the directory industry.
I am personally not big on bidding directories. Sooner or later Google will take aim at them.
Eye Opening for Directory Industry. Your new Theme is nice Balkhis
I did not know that it could be that lucrative, that was a very informative post.
Wow, you sold your directory for $20k! That’s impressive. I am clearly out of the loop on directories. I thought they were dead.
I never even heard of a bidding directory b4 this post.
ADam
Majority of the BIG PR dirs are broke down … and i never recommend to have a link on Bid dir as its penalised and can get our site penalised by G too.