The Last Tribe of Cannibals

Like the last tribe of Cannibals to cross paths with "civilization", Googbies are not sure what to make of the new way of life forced onto them at gunpoint by Google. No more frenzied buying of links to drive a website higher in the rankings and pagerank? But, that's the way we've been doing it for years! Google wanted links... we bought links!!! What's the problem!?

Like cannibalism the link buying orgy of the recent past began to have a serious affect on the entire Googbie population. As search engine results became increasingly peppered with sites that weren't there because a lot of other sites voluntarily linked to them (i.e. they had quality content), but rather because they had paid other sites to link to them in order to fake popularity.

So no more eating your neighbor when you have a disagreement? Now we Googbies will have to resort to playing on a more level playing field where the higher the quality of your site(s) the better rankings in the search engine results (SERPs).

Damn. I call for a meeting. We need to find new ways to feed ourselves!

The End of the Web Directory Game

We bid farewell to the "web directory game".

For most of this year it seems there were umpteen directories being launched daily. Thousands and thousands of web directories from general to niche, from free to paid, and more recently a huge number of "bidding" directories came to be.

Well, it appears that Google has concluded that the "web directory game" (i.e. practice of gaming the search engines by adding hundreds of links to a website in web directories) had to end. The search engines use, in part, the number of links pointing to a site to determine the popularity, and therefore, quality of a website. With more webmasters artificially inflating this number via web directories Google really had no option, but to do something to protect the integrity of their search results.

So they finally did something. After months of speculation it is finally clear that Google is devaluing the links from most web directories to websites. The evidence is all over, but the clearest evidence can be found by looking at the drastic reductions in the numbers of back links it recognizes that are pointing to the top web directories. Rand Fishkin's post on SEOmoz.org sums the damage done to the top directories well.

As I've said in a previous post I understand their need to maintain "search results integrity". So even though many web directories exercise "editorial integrity" resulting in a directory of quality sites the practice of disguising a websites popularity by submitting to hundreds of web directories appears to be coming to an abrupt end.

Adding insult to injury Google's stock hit an all-time high today and it was announced that Google now represents 54% of all web searches, up 50% from last year. Yahoo! is a distant 2nd at 20% and MSN a distant 3rd with 13%.

Clearly the biggest beneficiary of this move to close down the "web directory game" is Google. Now if a webmaster wants to move to the top of the search results they'll have to either produce a quality site and wait a long while to get there OR they'll have to buy some Google Adwords to get there instantly. As my pals in the Guiness commercials would say... BRILLIANT!.

The Best Web Directories

Every day someone new asks which web directories are the best to submit to and there is no right or wrong answer. This post in the BigGuide Webmaster Resource Blog sums up how I feel about it and is worth reading.

Another resource not listed in that post is Aviva's Strongest Web Directories list.

Smart Googbies invest in listings when they run across an opportunity where the cost/benefit ratio is favorable so they typically invest in listings over time after any initial or upfront investment has long passed. In addition, search engines are said to prefer gradually increasing backlink strategy over the "big bang" upfront orgy of link buying.

This Googbie still believes our very own BigGuide Internet Directory offers as strong a cost/benefit ratio at $7 for a review fee for a permanent listing as any other web directory out there. Of course we're biased but, we really do believe it's a great long term value for any webmaster. With over 6,000 quality websites listed, including many editor-added "gems", the visitor experience is far better than most directories offer and should insure the already strong traffic continues to grow over time.

Of course there are hundreds of other directories worth every penny of their review fee and you'll find more information on them in the post in the BigGuide blog.

Recommended New Tool

Compete.com has launched a new tool that allows clients to determine and track what keywords competitors are ranking high for and develop strategies to exploit that competitive intelligence.

The 'Keyword Referral' tool helps you discover which sites are benefiting more than others from keyword phrases. The tool allows clients to assess which websites are getting the most traffic from selected keyword phrases and to determine how important these different phrases are to each of these sites for generating high traffic.

The tool is not free, but their payment scheme is essentially a pay-as-you-go scheme with the entry level as little as $20. You can check out the Compete.com keyword referral tool here.

Googbies Turn Violent

Historically Google updated the pagerank of websites every 90 days or thereabouts and it's now been over 4 months since the last update and Googbies are turning violent. Fortunately this violence has only led to Google bashing and cyber-duels in the various webmaster forums across the web.

Speculation that Google is working through some 'problem' it has with it's pageranking methodology is growing. Of greatest concern to many webmasters and some businesses is the rumor that the delay is being cased by an effort by Google to reduce or eliminate the value of links that have been paid for in web directories or on sites that rent text link ads.

I, for one, look forward to the update being over with and done regardless of what the outcome means for my directories. Not knowing is worse then bad news.