Worth building a directory site in 2021?

Dmoz Redux or not?

[jmccormac]

Well, Dmoz closed in 2017 but some of the RDFs are still around. There will, of course, be a major linkrot problem to be solved first by anyone using that data. Apparently the ODP project has been renamed as Curlie.org. That's enough of the history lesson. Here's the question: Is it worth building a web directory in 2021?

Search engines such as Google lag in detecting new websites and especially so in ccTLD. The FUD about link building from Google and its buddies in the media a few years ago has deterred new sites from linking and compared to the pre-FUD webscape, the lack of links is creating a kind of island effect for many websites. While the number of new websites each month overtook the abilities of hobbyist web directory operators (winging it on a PHP script and a prayer) to cope with the numbers of new websites around 1998 or so, would a partially automated approach (think of it as a smarter search engine that detects and classifies sites) work?

Regards...jmcc

[tangor]

Is there a mainstream market? Probably not. But something well done, active, up-to-date and refined still has value out there ... if only those who might value it can find it. Might require a bit of marketing on the directory's side to get the word out ... but that's how it all works anyway!

[jmccormac]

Ironically, the automation aspect is easier. The main problem with Dmoz and other directories was that their detection of new sites was not scalable and relied on human detection and site submissions. Detecting new sites can be done automatically and because many hosting operations are now geographically local, it makes associating sites with countries or even localities a lot easier. Might be worth doing a few experiments to see what happens.

Regards...jmcc

[JorgeV]

Hello,

I say that, on the Internet, everything is unpredictable. It doesn't matter if an idea sounds good or bad, success (or failure) can happen for any reason. So , try, and see how it goes.

[engine]

Generic directories aren't going to work there days. Why would anyone use it if you can search and find much faster with the search engine of your choice.

Specialist directories have a place, imho, assuming the specialist directory can be found in the first place

[jmccormac]

The data is there for generic country directories using ccTLD sites (a particular vulnerability of Google's) or specialist sites (domain names and web hosting). Search engines would, theoretically, be competitors but it is a question of finding their vulnerabilities and exploiting them. The ccTLD angle is still a major one for Google. Bing has difficulty in finding its own back end even with a sitemap.

Regards...jmcc

[hemanath]

Directory submission is still valid practice. As you see directory submission is still effective. But there are so many people who are ranking well without building backlinks and without submitting to any directories.

[Kendo]

Kind of related... I noticed that Google's backlinks count on one site had dropped by 20% which is a lot. I then noticed that Quora was not on the list at all.

[jmccormac]

Quora has been tagged/demoted in terms of backlinks and authority?

Regards...jmcc

[Kendo]

It appears so by my list. I was a regular contributor for answers and dropped links occasionally, when appropriate but subtly. Most of the questions are looking like seeds for spam, like "what is yet-another-startup.biz?" and "What is so good about yet-another-new-programming-language?" and often asked by the same SEO spammers.

[jmccormac]

It is an interesting site (A kind of serendipity trap where you read one article and then another and another.) but I see loads of low quality links when reading about domain names or web hosting. The surprising thing is that it has taken Google so long to demote those links.

Regard...jmcc

[Kendo]

I wouldn't be surprised because it is mostly spammy articles that I see.

I checked again... backlinks down by 20% but no change in ranking of my keywords. However I did see that Quora has 5 backlinks for me that were not there last week. But that is way short because our SEO guy was spamming there for all of last year. Perhaps Quora dumps old articles?

[jmccormac]

Could be a time element in how the links are treated. Quora could be considered a multi-user blog with older content and links getting demoted. (Just a guess. There are many people here who know more about SEO than me.)

Regards...jmcc

[hemanath]

Definitely not. Web Directories probably still have a small impact on your rankings, just like any other site that links to you and passes Page Rank. However, because they've been abused as an SEO tactic over the years, Google penalizes people that use web directories.

[Kendo]

My backlinks continue to drop. Late last year they were only 10% of what they used to be a few years ago.

Today they are down to 75% of what they were at Xmas.

But rankings don't seem to have changed so perhaps it has affected everyone.