will google spider zeal/looksmart directories

[coffeelover]

Because I got my non-commercial site listed through Zeal, my site now comes up first on MSN.com searches for one of my keywords and 4th for another of my keywords (before tons of commercial sites!), which in my mind is a little crazy, but I'm not going to complain.

However, I am still not even indexed through Google (site was deep crawled when only a couple of days old several weeks ago-- at time only had index page up).

Will Google spider eventually the Zeal directories? The subdirectory my site is listed in was not even rated by Google, which makes me think not.

If a PR4 or PR5 or PR6 site gets freshboted that points to my site, will I get then get freshboted?

Thanks
Theodore

[garylo]

Google will index your site if there is a link pointing to your site on a page that is indexed by Google.

[rfgdxm1]

Google has chosen not to spider Zeal/Looksmart. Thus, you need inbound links from psges that Google spiders. The higher the PR the better.

[jeremy goodrich]

The Zeal directory is filled with thousands of listings from corporates that get them all included as part of a deal with LookSmart.

When the directory is obviously filled with such cr@p, why on earth would Google waste time / resources / etc on spidering the thing?

Waste of bandwidth, imho. And from Google's decision, they seem to agree with that :)

[jon80]

Therefore no pagerank benefit from Zeal, just any traffic it may generate.

[rfgdxm1]

I have to agree with Jeremy. It isn't that the Looksmart directory is filled with paid listings; the Yahoo directory today is little more than corporates buying PR from Yahoo. The problem is that Looksmart accepts, and even encourages, deep linking and multiple listings. Even Zealots are encouraged to do this with the "node level" rule, which actually requires in some cases that a site be listed in both the child and parent cat. If I did that at the ODP, they'd toss me out on my ear. At Zeal, failing to do this is considered wrong.

[GrinninGordon]

Google do index Zeal results.

I saw a new site with only 3 back links on Google, one was Zeal.

[jeremy goodrich]

I've seen that as well, GrinninGordon -> but currently, the site doesn't show the Zeal link as a back link.

And when checking the PageRank of the cat where the site is still listed, it's above the threshold (as long as it's still PR 4) for a link to show.

So perhaps they filter over time, or what not, but from what I've seen, they certainly do filter.

If anything, Google would give a big negative to a site that's listed there, and not in a directory that is listed on their 'how to get listed in Google' page. :) They specifically mention Yahoo, and DMOZ.

Well, perhaps Google wouldn't do that, but I know if I was in on things, I definitely would. :)

[rfgdxm1]

If Google does spider Zeal, they are certainly filtering a lot. On a quick check I couldn't find any sites with a Zeal backlink I expected would.

[bether2]

Do a google search on "Zeal.com." Click "More results from Zeal.com" and you'll see 149,000 results.

So, IMHO, this means that google does spider some portion of Zeal. However, I haven't personally seen any evidence that pagerank is passed from Zeal to the sites in its categories. Nor have I seen any sites that have Zeal backlinks.

Maybe this is because Zeal links are redirects?

Beth

[speda1]

Redirects with 2 query string parameters.

[jon80]

Surely it would not be difficult for Google to crawl the non commercial part of Zeal and filter out all but one entry for a given site?

[dwilson]

This question is addressed in another thread, but I can't get Site search to work right now.

Anyway, the conclusion there was that Zeal's robots.txt did not allow it to be crawled. exit.jhtml has a disallow on it, and all zeal's links out to the sites go through exit.jhtml.

[rfgdxm1]

>Anyway, the conclusion there was that Zeal's robots.txt did not allow it to be crawled. exit.jhtml has a disallow on it, and all zeal's links out to the sites go through exit.jhtml.

Try looking closer:

[looksmart.com...]

# LookSmart: robots.txt
#
# This file is used to allow crawlers to index our site.
# It is NOT used for any other purpose, such as filtering
# impressions or clicks.
#
# See [listings.looksmart.com...] for information
# on the methods used to ensure the accuracy of click tracking and reporting.
User-agent: *
Disallow:

Looksmart is the exact same database as Zeal. Google can crawl Looksmart.