The truth - Directories are not penalized!

[jhnrang]

Of late there has been lots of talk all over the net about supposed penalization of web directories- specially paid directories.
Many directories lost ranking for their own brand name - first on 1st September and second on 26th September.

After long and hard look all over the net- I must say that these directories are not penalized but rather it is the result of a big change in the Google algo.

Due to manipulation of SERPs and PR through paid links- Google has initiated a hard crack on paid links that passes PR juice. In order to do that - it needs a new algo that would completely over-haul the current algo. Google through Matt Cutts says - sites selling or buying will not be penalized -- Pls refer to the cached text on Matts Blog post HERE-

Few days back DMOZ - the old war-horse that enjoys a special status from Gogle also had same problem. It was quickly restored though ad Matt Cutts was instrumental in bringing it back by participating himself in a discussion on the topic over Sphinn

There Matt says that DMOZ went out of Google as the bots were not able to crawl the site properly. Actually DMOZ was having its URL changed from without WWW to with WWW.

It was also mentioned on the discussion that it might take upto 2 months for bts to crawl a site properly.

So I think it is mostly this problem faced by most directories now. everything should be OK in the next few weeks.

Here I must also mention that - most of the supposedly penalized directories lost idexed pages -that also relates my opinion to crawling problem.

Also there are not only directories -but other sites as well which are having same ranking problems.

[forumrating]

i hadcouple of directories i sold them out, but if you are promoting them well it shdnt be a issue, more over its quality which people look for then mass list of directories.

at times good to be in top 5 then submit in 5000

also u never know what google is upto, other thing is if serps creates issues directories will have to spend with adwords instead of text links to get traffic which would be loss to webmasters.

[Sam]

I will take it as good news John. Glad to read every word you said. Thanks for the news

[humm]

You never know what can happen. All I say is continue working hard. Make sure what you do is quality.

[jhnrang]

Thanks Sam. It has been my observation.
@forumrating- Yup mate- you never know what Google is upto. We can do just that much- Guesswork
Sunny- welcome here- And yes- quality speaks more than quantity.

[fear]

Forumrating = I'm very happy with the directories that I bought from you.
And we should just try harder and harder.

[maldives]

I think everything will back to normal soon. Why would they specifically target few directories while there are thousands of them out there? May be google does not like DP?

[adnan]

Do I know this person from somewhere. (thread opener)

I believe this is the same guy that tried to convince me that if a directory showed sitelinks, it's considered an authority.

Apparently some of those authorities are nowhere to be found on Google.

Luckily I kept a copy of the transcript right here

Big Directory Argument, read this thread - Directory Junction Forums

[bhushna22]

good post u guys