Ok, its been a while, so I think its about time for me to make a comment on what happened to a series of very well known directories. A couple of weeks ago a lot a directories had a google poenalty of some kind placed on them.

Basically google implented a new tweak to its algo  and a lot of directories were severly hit. The best way to see this was to actually do a search for the directory using its name. Many now do not appear on the first page of googles serp´s.

Anyway, there was lots of shouting about it, and eventually people then decided to get back on with there lives.

My opinion on what happened:

the directories that triggered the tweaked algo were all clearly agressively buying links from pretty much any source to pump up there inner page pr. Sitewide footers, forum signiture links …. and I suspect that the algo tweak has been an attempt by google to clean up a little on the link selling mess thats really causing there algo some problems.

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Ok well a couple of weeks ago google stopped showing the supplemental index tag inits results. That pretty muuch killed off my supplemental index testing ….

Gee, thanks Google!

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Just think about it, the only reason for your link being there is that you paid. And you think the search engines don´t know this? And if they do, do you think they give any value to that link?

The only reason that your link is higher or lower, ie BETTER RANKED in a bidding directory, is purely a financial one. So your are buying a link, and its position. Something that is surely so obvious that at some stage the search engines will just ban all sites running the known bidding directory scripts.

The owners of these directories are stating that they are noticably more porfitable directories to run, at least on a short term basis. But I have a clear general recommendation to site owners not to use these directories. I think there gonna get banned from the search engines and the site owners that have paid for there search engine influencing link will be out of pocket. So before you spend your money in a bidding directory think, is that a quality link your paying for your quality money?

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The great majority of the Yahoo directories listings are in the supplemental index. Here is some basic data:

1. Pages indexed in Google: 1,910,000
2. Yet on the results page 950 (Yahoo Directory in the supplemental index) the dreaded supplemental result tag appears.
3. Thats approx 10,000 out of almost 2 million pages not supplementally indexed.
4. So 199 out of 200 listings in the Yahoo directory are supplemental!

This raises a series of questions.

1. Why are pages in the yahoo directory in the supplemental index?
2. Does this mean that Yahoo should cut its price for the ´´review´´?
3. Will Google remove there explicit recommendation in google webmaster guidelines concerning the yahoo directory?
4. Does this mark the end of the directory niche?

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Hi all, just did some more basic linking into www.enterwork.net/directory/ and will wait a couple of weeks to see what happens on the supps.

At the moment the pages that are not supplemental float betwoeen 8 and 56. It will be interesting to see what happenes.

These new inbounds are from 8 seperate c-span ips and from apges that have some poor relevance to directories.

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I just did a quick site: comand on enterwork.net/directory/ and have seen a significant improvement.

This directory now has 58 pages out of the supplemental index. This leads to an interesting question.

On a supplemental page, once a quality inbound link is gotten, how long does it take to get that page out of the supps index?

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Well in 8 days the directory I have used to do some basic supplemetal index tests on has seen some movement.

Having driven 13 links into the top tier category structures the enterwork.net directory from a single source, this very blog, and from the same post, we can know see that the number of none supplemental indexed pages has changed from 9 to 19.

In fact its these very top tier categories that have come out of the supplemental index. I will wait a couple of days to see if this moves any more, and if not, I will look at what next step to take.

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I saw in my webstats that someone visited looking for the benefits of the Yahoo directory. So I thought a quick post was in order!

The principal benefit is that it is considered an authoritative link. It is even in the google webmaster guidelines! Now its hard to get more authoritative than that. This type of link has clearly been sidelined from the paid links debate that is raging since Matt Cutts famous post on reporting sites that clearly sell links to test some new algo tweaks. In this debate Matt Cutts does a smart side step and claims that the yahoo fee is for human review, not the actual link!

Ok well appart from the semantics involved in that, I would argue that the really test of the value of a link from the yahoo directory is that if your willing to spend 299 for a review (come on Matt thats really poor), then your site is pretty sure not to be a MFA junk site. Anyone spending that for a link must feel really comfortable with the quality of there content.

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The directory has only 9 none supplemental pages.

Yahoo shows 369 backlinks into the index page of the directory, google 6.

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Ok, so we all have seen the vast majority of directories go supplemental in the last few months, as Google gets better at cleaning its SERPs of the more spammy directories. So I have decided to do a little experiment.

The enterwork directory went supplemental serveral months ago. As a simple test, I am going to give each of the 13 different top tier categories an inbound link form this post. And I will track dates and timing of google caching these backlinks and if its enough to get 2 tier pages out of the supplemental.

The links are:

1. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Blogs/
2. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Business_and_Economy/
3. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Computers_and_Internet/
4. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Education/
5. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Entertainment/
6. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Health/
7. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Internet_and_Web_Services/
8. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/News_and_Media/
9. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Recreation_and_Sports/
10. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Reference/
11. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Science_and_Technology/
12. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Shopping/
13. http://www.enterwork.net/directory/Society/

So let the test begin!

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