Fuzzuck.com

Here’s a quick tip to save directory owners and editors some grief in the future.

Ir’s not uncommon for domains to expire and get snatched up by some one wanting to take advantage of the traffic, inbound links or PageRank.

The new content could be undesirable or even malicious and can really degrade your visitors’ experience. Linking to bad neighborhoods could possibly cause some problems with search engines.

All listings should have an expiration date regardless of the type of listing. At a minimum, listings should have the expiration date set to coincide with the domain name registration expiration.

While we recommend that listings are reviewed regularly, this will at least give you the opportunity to see if the domain is renewed or dropped. 

The amount of misinformation on webmaster forums about DMOZ (Open Directory Project) is almost overwhelming and only leads to confusion, frustration and disappointment for the average webmaster.

Let’s clear up a number of misconceptions and try to improve your chances of actually getting a suggestion reviewed and possibly listed.

First off, we need to understand that the directory project’s purpose is not a listing service for web site owners or webmasters. Yes, site suggestions are accepted, but they are under no obligation to process or respond to them.

Editors are volunteers and may choose to perform a variety of tasks which may be of more importance than reviewing submissions from the general public. Updates, errors, category reorganizations, taxonomy, hierarchy, internal projects, editor applications and internal discussions all probably rank well above the mundane task of reviewing suggested sites.

It’s a little clearer now as to why it can take quite some time before a suggestion might get reviewed. Editors are quick to note that it can take anywhere from a matter of hours to a couple of years as there really is no way of knowing when an editor might take an interest in reviewing the suggested sites.

So how can you increase your chances that your suggestion will get reviewed?

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Scam? Yep.

Bid directory owners will never see it as such, but yes, bid directories are nothing but a scam.

What is a bid directory? A bid directory lists sites based on the amount bid, with the highest paying sites listed at the top of the list. The top bidders are also listed in order of bid amount on the front page (where every one can see just how big of an idiot you really are).

This directory model doesn’t list sites based on merit. Quality content? Doesn’t matter. Timely information? Doesn’t matter. All it takes is a little ignorance and willingness to part with your money.

Many bid directories are placed on recently acquired deleted domains with foolbar PageRank. It’s easy to identify the scammers on popular webmaster forums peddling links based on the Google PageRank of an unrelated domain. The domain name itself should be the first indication that someone is looking to profit off of the ignorance of others.

Names such as apricot2008.net, web2006.org or lionsanime.com are a clear signal that these sites were not developed as a bid for position web directory. Checking the domain name at Archive.org will reveal what the sites were prior to being grabbed up before the foolbar PageRank is gone.

Bids are artificially inflated by the bidding directory owners, yet they don’t consider this practice unethical in the least. It’s not uncommon to see new bid directories offering free listings at the minimum fee in order to populate some of the categories to make it appear that someone is actually buying links in their directory.

By offering these “free” listings it now inflates the actual bid price needed to list your site at the top spot.

Another method used to artificially inflate bids is the common practice of bid directory owners “buying” listings on each others directory. I bid $100.00 on your directory, you then bid $100.00 at mine. Enough said?

It’s also not uncommon for bid directory owners to sell links in the sidebar, especially on dropped domains with visible foolbar PageRank; I’m not sure why someone would want to “bid” themselves onto the front page when the directory owner is selling cheap links in the sidebar.

So called link effects are the latest addition to bid directories in an attempt to extract a few more dollars from you; exaggerated claims that boast how you’ll receive an increase in traffic if you add a “star” next to your listing are not uncommon.

What puzzles me most is why someone would want to announce to the world how big of an idiot they really are by wasting enough money to be on the front page of these worthless directories?

I’m still amused by the various posts and discussions in webmaster forums regarding sitelinks in Google’s search results. We need to get past the misconception that the occurrence of sitelinks confers some sort of status upon a web site, and some how the webmaster or site owner is responsible for this as it’s some sort of achievement or reward for their link building or PageRank “sculpting” efforts.

I think it’s necessary to first understand the basics regarding Google and their search results. Google classifies search queries into three categories:

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Back in September we made a few changes to our web directory eWebPages.org related to our submission form and I’m quite pleased with the results after 6 months. The quality of submissions have improved somewhat, and I no longer find myself constantly arguing with webmasters about titles and descriptions that are edited prior to acceptance.

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