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* a human edited directory with good organization, little spam, but with a poor performance in terms of submissions, updates etc.
* or a fully automated directory with less organization, more spam, but with a high throughput for submissions and updates?
Please, don't rush to the answer. Give it some thought.
If you read the charter of this forum, a main point of directories is to act as a kind of seed for the "other search engines". The term "other search engines" seems to imply that the search engine is automated and finds all information by itself without help from human editors or users, e.g. Google.
The question is: how will directories stay useful in the future? Are they going to be "seeds" for the other search engines, or will they have a life of their own providing usefulness on their own terms?
Do a search on Google for almost "any" topic like home improvement, recipes or real estate and you will get the idea. These directories can be very useful to get into for links and traffic. I have one site (not in profile) and I get quite a few visitors from these smaller directories. I get more visitors/leads from these smaller directories to this site then from MSN and AOL put together. This site ranks very well in the above mentioned SE's yet I don't get near the traffic from them as the smaller directories. I always try to search out these niche directories when promoting a site.
I'll look into this. I totally agree that other sites often provide as much traffic as search engine positions.
The site I work on gets a lot of links to it via link pages - mainly of use for search engine optimisation; the highest 3 referring sites are google.com, google.co.uk and msn. After this however (and before other SE's) are two referring websites which (when I think about it) are essentially directories in nature - one a flights orientated website and the other a particular destination website (though this contains lots of information itself). I hadn't considered thinking of them as directories before - I'll need to be on the look out for others like them!
I agree that these smaller directories will continue to do well and be of value - though people will probably use SE's to find them first as oppossed to the large directories.
If the sites that these smaller directories feature link back to the small-directory-site then an interesting feature emerges: Search Engines will be used to find sites, and the sites that will often appear at the top of the SE will be these small specific directories (assumming they opt to contain at least some original content) - effectively combining SE and Directories together. :)
(The got quite high traffic when they were 5.000 sites as well.)
There is no fee to be listed, nor can you your way into the directory.
It makes me believe that quality is more important than size. ;)
Check your StickyMail (in the menu at the top of the forums).
I have sent you two URL's of directories of directories. :) I am not affiliated with either. But they are good references to get you started.
Alexa has taken a stab at this, where you can rate the site and write a review. It has it's problems right now (spamming the ratings etc). Google to some extent does this with it's Page Ranking - it assumes that a site with more incoming links than another is "better".
This will be a long time coming, as it is so full of potholes and perils, but I think eventually it will start to enter into some kind of "relevance" factor. Perhaps eventually the SE's and even directories will have some kind of "customer rating" form for sites. Directories would be much toughher to police for bias I think. And perhaps there would be more than one rating - how would you rate an information site?
The problem with directories is that they present all of those that have managed to get listed as "equal", while in fact they are obviously not - so the use ends up having to do just as much searching through all the listed sites as they would if presented by a search engine. Directories, I think, will need some way to set themselves apart from SE's to make people want to use them.
I also think that the Yahoo model of "pay for inclusion" will not work. I think to be viable, a directory will have to be paid inclusion - but not the way Yahoo does it. I would guess that only a very small percentage of the Yahoo listings in the business categories are paid, since so many are grandfathered in for free - they are getting a free ride while any new ones have to pay an annual fee just to compete against them. (and I see that Yahoo is de-emphasing it's directory now - it is almost hard to find at all).
I have this incorporated into my site (review,ratings,#hits) but have it hidden until I can figure out a way to keep people from spamming their sites with reviews, ratings and hits. Problem is I don't think I will ever be able to use it without it's inherent problems - so it will be hidden away forever :(
To a large extent, this misses the point; the real debate is about technology v human+technology.
As the web continues to grow, automated ranking systems will need to get ever more sophisticated. The down side is that they are all backward-looking ... Google discriminates against new sites, because it can only review previous traffic. And even auto-SEs have deadlinks, google lately has had too, too many.
Human directories, big or small, can use the latest and best technology, with flexibility that SEs cannot even dream of (Bless Them!)
I'll bet most people here already know a niche directory for their own special interest ... and they are spreading.
ODP etc., may be able to survive, either by harnessing these niches as an umbrella, or by listening to its editors - where it loses on local knowledge, it gains compensates by its ability to share technology and ideas. But the future emphasis - My Guess - is less worry about quantity, more about quality.
I predict that the day will come that ODP says "No pop up boxes" (for example). The question is simply "Will that be soon enough?"
I think the only way to do it is to have user and/or customer ratings - but even those would be subject to spamming. Maybe it just is not viable at this stage of the game. Site and/or company "quality" is highly subjective, so to be fair, you would have to get a fairly high number of reports or ratings. At this point I see no way to do it.
But I think the niche directories that 'grade' sites are in error - they do it 'because they can' or more likely - 'because the robots can't'.
The nature of the internet, waste high in scams and worse, means that the user has to make decisions. A wise directory nurtures that, rather than pretending they are 100% trustworthy.
A broad, objective division, perhaps into one or two levels of specialization vs. consumer is all that's needed to narrow searches a little - and still beyond machines.
"Editor Picks" etc., have but one useful function - they allow rogue editors to say "Hey - Look At Me - I'm Corrupt!". Nil Else.
Of course, the reality always falls short of the ideal. After editing for three years I have lost all patience with real estate and debt consolidation and their ilk, so I cling to my philology and political theory and other specialized interests. Few editors can stomach gambling or adult sites, or even ordinary shopping for very long before burning out.
But I fail to see how this means the certain demise of the ODP. Subject categories, particularly non-commercial ones, are actively edited, and some are used by third party associations or other vertical portals using tools such as Digital Windmill [digitalwindmill.com]. And using ODP's software to catalogue these niche sites is still more accessible than maintaining a listing by hand, or by creating one's own directory system. What do these users care if there is a backlog in Viagra resellers? No, the vaunted goal of creating a completely comprehensive directory of the web may never be achieved. But then, I'm not searching for inkjet cartridge refillers or Viagra resellers, and I'm not especially concerned that the ODP has a greater backlog there than in literary criticism or college basketball-- rather the opposite, I'm happy that attention is paid to subjects I actually search for.
Moreover, this has been an interesting thread so far, but I think too many people are unnecessarily compartmentalizing. When I search, I typically use Google. But I do not click on the results themselves, as my long experience on the Internet has taught me that a spammer has probably cleverly manipulated the results. I look instead at the results returned for Google Directory (i.e. ODP) categories, then browse the category I think matches what I'm looking for. I will then also check any specialty directories that are listed in that category.
Sure, that's just me. And right now webmasters may reach for the low-hanging fruit of lazy searchers. But within a few years, the next generation of web surfers will be out and about shopping, and they'll be able to navigate around the web the same way that Gen-X consumed television advertising in a far more sophisticated way than their grandparents did.
That works fine on the few directories that are well maintained, but try it on a business or computer category and you are wasting your time.
