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What types of directories are seen as sources of paid links?

 
 

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Abstract Abstract

Question: “What types of directories are seen as sources of paid links?”

Answer: Google looks at the value add of directories and if they have an editorial review process to assure the quality of the listings. If none of this is given the directory will likely be seen as a source of paid links.
0:00
We have a question from Fábio Ricotta in Brazil. Fábio asks: „Will Google consider Yahoo! Directory and BestOfTheWeb as sources of paid links? If no, why is this different from another site that sells links?“.

0:13
Well, I've answered this question in the past, but since enough people are curious to ask, I'll do the spiel again. Whenever we look at whether a directory is useful to users, we say: OK, what is the value add of that directory?

0:26
So, do they go out and find entries on their own? Or do they only wait for people to come to them? How much do they charge and what is the editorial service thats being charged? If a directory takes $50 and every single person who ever applies into the directory, automatically gets in for that $50, there's not as much editorial oversight as something like the Yahoo! Directory, where people do get rejected.

0:50
So, if there's no editorial value-add there, then that is much closer to paid links. In fact, if you look at our Webmaster Quality Guidelines, we used to have a guideline that says: submit your site to directories and we gave a few example directories.

1:05
And what we found was happening, was people would get obsessed with that line and they would go out and look for a lot of directories and there were people who were like: oh well, if people are looking for directories, I'll make a directory.

1:16
And so you saw all these fly-by-night directories, that would start up and say: Oh yes, I'm the PageRank 6 directory. You give me $50 and you'll automatically get an entry in my directory. And it's not as if those type of listings are the sort of things, that users really value or that do a lot of good in our searchresults or that we want to do a lot of good.

1:35
So we ended up taking out that mention in our Webmaster Guidelines, so that people don't get obsessed with directories and think: Yes, I have to go find a bunch of different directories to submit my site to.

1:46
So there are some directories that do carry weight. The Yahoo! Directory does a good job of editorial discretion and actually doing a review and rejecting a significant number of entries that are low-quality.

1:59
So the question in your mind, whenever you're considering a directory, is: What is the value-add? Do they have high standards? I have a blogpost out, where i talk about some of the other different factors of a directory and whether we might consider it as real. But those are some of the factors that you should ask yourself about. So by those measures: No, the Yahoo! Directory is not just automatically paid links.

2:20
Typically, paid links tend to be much lower quality, they're going to be much more automatic. People will give you whatever anchor-text you want, all those sorts of things. So there is a difference and at the same time, don't go overboard worrying about submitting your site to every directory. If you make a great site and try to make sure that people will find out about it, those are some of the things that really make a difference. Not: „Ok, I have to go submit my site to at least five directories or at least ten directories“ or anything like that.