Are portal directory type sites taking over the search engines?

How does a single company in an industry keep position?

[lindavh]

I have a question about what I think is becoming a trend on the internet. Although I am sure it's been going on for a while, it's just now becoming more visible in a particular industry that I am involved with.

My site has been maintaining a very high position in Google and others due to lots of hard work in optimizing, including years of gathering good free links within our industry due in part to a good reputation in the industry.

What I see increasingly coming up the ranks are "portal or directory like industry sites" that have thousands of links because of their wide marketing and multiple site capability, some have several sites within the industry that cross link.

My question is, do I stand a chance as times goes on as a single site for a single company. I am still maintaining the number one position in Google for the major keywords, but I believe that is due to the years we have been there, so click through may be a factor, and that we have some good links as well.

How will companies that start new even begin to position themselves to rank higher than these major portal directory type sites with thousands of links to them (albeit thousands of links going out), but covering every major city? How will companies keep their positions with these portal sites coming up the ranks?

I am concerned because all sites coming up these last few updates are not local companies, but rather directory type sites for our industry. I feel like I am holding position with my claws as all sites looming below on first page are major directory sites for our industry, not local, but nationwide. Yikes!

[Brad]

As the web gets larger the general search engines are going to have to start handing off searchers to specialized search indexes. I cannot see any other way to handle it.