europeforvisitors - 5:59 pm on Aug 2, 2005 (gmt 0)

Personally speaking - running a major web directory - I had two choices, one is to leave some of my directory categories empty, and then been accused of duplication content and runnind adsense on pages with no useful content (in this case no content at all), and the other choice is to fill in these categories with old data from ODP, then proceeding with accepting users submissions and my editors hunting for new professional websites.

Couldn't you just use robots.txt block googlebot from empty directories or pages that Google understandably considers worthless to its users?

I really don't care what people are thinking of my business model, it's my business model.

You have a right to pursue your business model, but Google has the right to pursue its business model, too. And if that means Google needs to purge its index of empty directory pages, duplicate content, etc., wouldn't it make sense for you to use tools such as robots.txt that will let you pursue your business model without running afoul of Google's (at least, if you want to rely on Google for traffic)?