Directories, Darn Directories and Positioning

Whose web pages are they anyway?

[whiterabbit]

This has probably been covered elsewhere, but here goes.

For the last month (or two?, three?, forever?), directory sites are appearing at the top of a lot of Google SERPS. These sites essentially reiterate the original Google search with a twist, the owner of the site presumably receives an income whenever a result is clicked and followed. (Inktomi, Espotting, Overture and Yes, Adsense, all displayed, mixed in with Googles own natural results.)

The directory page is (generally) created from snippets of more relevant sites, that seem to offer the objects or information that the searcher was looking for, so, the searcher is finding what they want, albeit an extra click (or twelve) from the Google SERP.

My questions:

Are the directories gaming the SE?
Are these pages prime candidates for at least one of Google's penalties or filters (keyword stuffing, duplicated content, etc.)?
Why are the directories appearing, when the sites that they refer to are the 'more' relevant results?
Isn't it against Googles rules to make money by manipulating the SERPS?

snippet from Googles TOS

The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Google Services to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales. You may not take the results from a Google search and reformat and display them, or mirror the Google home page or results pages on your Web site. You may not "meta-search" Google. If you want to make commercial use of the Google Services, you must enter into an agreement with Google to do so in advance.

Have these directories entered into a financial arrangement with Google, and if so, does this mean that Pay For Position is alive and kicking once more?

Thanks for reading.

Tony

[Freedom]

Read up more on the Hilltop Algo. Do a Google search for it along with the author Krishna Bharat.

[whiterabbit]

Thanks for that Freedom, interesting stuff.

It throws up further questions;

Is/Has Google shifting/shifted from its perceived position as a search engine, by relying on a fraction of its index for 'particular' searches?

Can the directories really claim the following 'expert' criteria?

Quote from: When Experts Agree: Using Non-Affiliated Experts to Rank Popular Topics
Krishna Bharat, George A. Mihaila

This is an indication that these pages were created for the purpose of directing users to resources, and hence we regard their opinion as valuable

Does 2.5 million pages seem an extremely small sample?

It would seem the this Hilltop Algo does indeed work, tidily and nicely, but, it doesn't address the issue of gaming the SE by feeding back the SEs own SERPS, with a smattering of other SEs SERPS thrown in for good 'financial' measure, along with a few outbound links to other, similar, hosted on a different IP, directory sites.

Tony

[Stefan]

The directories are linking to content sites such as ours. They are parasites and have been polluting the G serps since florida. One can only hope that Google will take some time out from their current pursuit of dollars to restore what was once a good algo and clean the lot of them out.

Are the directories gaming the SE?

No, Google is doing it for them.

[Patrick Taylor]

They are parasites and have been polluting the G serps...

Totally agree. It often takes days to research unique content for the topic of a page, or years of experience to know the subject. Then it can take days to put it together on a web page in an interesting way. In other words, a lot of resources go into providing UNIQUE CONTENT that people might actually be looking for.

In one of my topic areas (and no doubt in many others) Google's SERPS are polluted with what can only be called garbage - sites with pages of nothing but links with a few of other peoples' keywords and key phrases thrown in. I'm referring to sites built by freeloaders who present nothing except links to other true-content pages about the subject (or even to other pages with nothing but links), and they are able, as Google apparently sees it, to present themselves as a so-called "authority". One is frequently hard put to find any real information.

The current importance of links - outgoing and incoming - to gain Google rankings, is thoroughly depressing. What happened to actual content?

[ILuvSrchEngines]

The G cheerleaders (two or three are still left out there) will tell you that you are imagining this problem, the results are better, and you should not expect to get anything for free. I am not a G cheerleader so all I have to say is that G is garbage results and a greedy company.

[Patrick Taylor]

Well for me, one of the attractive and refreshing things about the World Wide Web is (or was) that even a real-life hermit could succeed, negating the all-pervading rule of life: "it's not what you know but who you know". All you had to do - goes the theory - is build a good informative website (and maybe learn something about Latent Semantic Indexing) then the level playing field would do the rest. Unfortunately it seems that links (and search terms) have literally become vital currencies... more important and resource-consuming than original content.

[Bobby_Davro]

Now we are blaming directories for Google's results problems....?

Directories are a very valuable resource on the web. Complaining about the existence of directories is just ridiculous IMHO. As the web becomes larger and SE results become more diverse, it will be the specialised directories that send us to the appropriate sites.

I think that you should really be complaining about the quality of the SERPs, not the directories themselves.

[Stefan]

Now we are blaming directories for Google's results problems....?

As a user, I have been actively complaining about directories in G, (and Y), since Austin. Directories are nothing but lists of links, often linking to other lists of links. They should be driven out of the serps with torches and pitchforks.

(Imho, etc, etc).

[wanna_learn]

IF GOOGLE FEELS THAT THE SITES LISTED IN THOSE DIRECTORY PAGES ARE THAT RELEVENT TO BE POSITION HIGH ON SERP, WHY DONT GOOGLE ITSELF ADOPT THOSE LISTING (sites lised in those directory pages)IN TOP SERP ITSELF?

[GoogleGuy]

Hey whiterabbit, can you do a spam report with your nickname and I'll check out an example of what you're talking about?

[martinibuster]

There's a lesson in there for you.

[Yidaki]

Before the directory bashing continues again:

What whiterabbit describes can't be specified as directories. These are scrambled, generated pages based on recycled search engine results for the purpose of generating thousands of pages with targeted content - quick and dirty and covering a broad base of money keywords.

This can't be compared to selective directories or even niche directories that actually take a lot of work to build (fyi, Patrick, at least my niche directories are in fact based on years of experience in my niche and adding new categories and filling them with valuable resources takes months not days.)

So if you don't like to be outranked by directories or to see directories within the serps at all, you should keep a clear, fair eye on the situation: a well done directory often deserves good rankings and is of value for the visitor - do not mix them with these recycled serp pages that label themself as directories!

Fortunately i expect Google to have an idea about what's a directory and the value of such.

If you ask for a filter that ditches directories in general, you ask for removal of my sites, too. Well, thanks for that!

---

wanna_learn, the google algo is not able to offer the quality results that people can find at my place for specific niche topics. Some sites i list within my directories are simply to deep buried at google. Many experts in my niche don't care about inbound links, anchortext etc. So ranking and returning directories that give these expert pages some visibility is - in my eyes - an important piece of the cake (providing quality results to the user).

[steveb]

We need a term for this. I thought there was one... but I forgot it again. :)

"Directories", like the Yahoo Directory, are not the point here. Its those pages of pseudo-search results.

[Leosghost]

I've got a site for which the search word has no more than 5 searches daily worldwide....since 6 months the site url itself wwhen searched for without the www.( and all those of others in its DMOZ category )has scored lower in all serps than psuedo directories which claim to link to it ( or other sites in it's DMOZ category )....( 94 sites currently claim to do so ..only 14 actually do the rest contain scrambled snippets with either unclickable or redirected clicks to elsewhere than the stated target url ) .....All of the psuedo directories have at the top of them the same 4 sites which sell a piece of equipment ( they are not the manufacturers just wholesale suppliers )which is needed to produce the product ( artwork of a very specific type ) sold by my site ..and the others in our DMOZ catagory we are in every case freelance artists

There are about 190 of us world wide in the DMOZ who do what we do ...

There are 4 major suppliers of Equipment to enable you to do what we do world wide ...these are the 4 top sites in google serps ...delivered for our "term" as A one word search

These sites are not in our catagory of Dmoz ...

Therefore you have to "modify" the dmoz results to put us together with them ...

These psuedo directories all admit to "modifiying" dmoz ...

These psuedo directories all run affiliate adwords for these same 4 companies ....and seed the rest of thier pages with scrambled snippets of my site's and others descriptions which however have in bold face the urls of one of these 4 stuck onto our "snippets"...breach of copyright encouraged by google ..

They are gaming the serps with the collusion of Google and even its active help ..a filter to remove them ( and all other aff' psuedo directories )would be so simple to make I have here 2 made by me personally in the last 30 days ..and I had lots of other stuff to do ....

"GG" you want to reply to this one or pretend as per usual that it didn't get posted and you never saw it ...

The fact that these 4 and their affiliates are being encouraged to do this doesn't affect me one iota financially ..( I have other business )..it does however give the lie to google claiming to present relevant results for term searched without the possiblity to buy position based on money spent with google via adwords or adsense ....

This so obvious disregard for honesty is what leads me and I'm sure others to disbelieve the comments of google on others current matters ....

All the PR in the world cannot cover this kind of thing

[edited by: Leosghost at 11:03 am (utc) on April 12, 2004]

[Leosghost]

Apologies to mods for getting quite so specific in the above post ...Its nearly impossible to demonstrate whats happening without doing so...

And if it's too vague someone always comes back with "not so"....

[whiterabbit]

Spam report will be with you shortly GoogleGuy (as soon as the SERPS stop jigging around :)).

Before the directory bashing continues again:
What whiterabbit describes can't be specified as directories. These are scrambled, generated pages based on recycled search engine results for the purpose of generating thousands of pages with targeted content - quick and dirty and covering a broad base of money keywords.

Apologies Yidaki, REAL directories are an important source of information, as you indicate, containing links to pages that wouldn't be found by users in any other circumstances, these shouldn't be filtered out.

It seems, to the casual observer (including SEs), these other 'directory' sites are in fact, purer, more targetted directories than any hand-edited one could ever be.

Most of my personal bookmarks are hand-edited directories. :)

Fortunately i expect Google to have an idea about what's a directory and the value of such.

Unfortunately, Googles machine-perception of what is and isn't an 'expert' may be swayed by the initial seed of sites (if the Hilltop Algo is in use), who may have been gaming the other SEs, when the sample was taken?

Tony

[Patrick Taylor]

Apologies Yidaki, REAL directories are an important source of information, as you indicate, containing links to pages that wouldn't be found by users in any other circumstances, these shouldn't be filtered out.

Ditto!

[Freedom]

They should rename this thread:

"How To Spam The HillTop Algo for Fun and Profit."

I am so sick and tired of seeing these "pseudo-directories" or Fake search engines with "pseudo-serps."

Some of them just cut and paste Google Serps with an H2 that reads: Search Results 1-20 for "Blue Widgets"

Why would anyone do this? = The AdSense or **** ads on the page are a good indicator.

[idoc]

"94 sites currently claim to do so ..only 14 actually do the rest contain scrambled snippets with either unclickable or redirected clicks to elsewhere than the stated target url"

The 80 missing sites are probably cloaks. I have got a 5 month old site that url:linktosite shows about 1200 linked pages. Most besides my 300 pages and the legitimate backlinks are cloaks that if you click on them redirect to an affiliate paying site. Most of these redisplay google's snippets to the googlebot and the affiliate page to a browser. Some substitute ppc listings and adwords for the users instead of redirecting to an affiliate.