Google kills the good times for Web directories?

A thread over at the Digital Point Forums started with someone stating that their listings in Web directories were not being recognized by Google any longer. Of course this could be big news for a lot of people, especially directory owners like myself.

One poster, Yellowberry, lamented "they have not counted any of my linkbacks from directory I think the good days are over".

But, would it really be a BAD thing?

As the owner of several directories it would certainly cause some concern as I have been earning money from them and was counting on the revenues to increase over time. But, setting my bias aside for a minute, I think if Google could eliminate the counting of thousands of redundant links in forums, on blogs, within posts on social sites, and yes on thousands of directories, that the quality of experiences in ALL of these sites would improve dramatically. Imagine a Webmasters forum where people only posted to communicate and not for a link.

Why? Because there are too many people posting rubbish everywhere they can simply to create the illusion that someone linked to their site. If Google can sort out the best quality sites based on actual quality instead of numbers of links Website owners will have to produce a quality product (content) to generate the links and the cream will rise and the incredible volume of sheer rubbish will disappear making it increasingly easy to find quality sites.

What will directory owners do? Well there's room for some and the smartest directory owners will survive and still others will thrive.

No matter what Google does the masses want quality Websites and finding them will always open up opportunities for companies other than Google.