Forbes.com recently ran a sloppy article on directories and I found some interesting food-for-thought in it.

“That means that Webmasters don’t just use links to point audiences to relevant content or goods and services they might buy–they also try to create links to float their site to the top of search results. Such “sponsored” or “paid” links have long made Googlers grind their teeth. Now, as Google talks tough and takes action, Web denizens are starting to protest that even Google can neither control nor even clearly define all the inappropriate links.”

Well of course Google would prefer that you ‘float’ to the top of the search results by paying them over-inflated advertising costs through Adwords campaigns.  I would advise Google to spend some time and resources on getting rid of the ten’s of thousands of MFA (Made For Adsense) sites that are ripping off their paying customers.  If they want better search results then they should tweak their algorithm, not go after the directory industry.  Paying for a review and buying a link to game the search engines are two completely different animals.  If I have a resource such as a directory and I charge a fee to review sites that submit to me, why should Google care?  If I deem that the submitted site meets my criteria (whatever that may be) for listing then it should receive a backlink that counts for search ranking purposes.  If the sites I am approving are low quality or spammy or whatever other negative adjectives Rand or the other web gurus can think of then those sites should not be indexed by Google in the first place.  If they aren’t indexed then they can’t manipulate their way to the top, right?

This whole uproar is simply about money, Google does not like to share and wants to bully around all the little guys because it saw big link broker companies being born and thriving based on achieving ranking in it’s search engine.  Google figures why should it share when it can simply push the competition out of the marketplace.  I hope they end up eating a huge anti-trust lawsuit for their unscrupulous acts.

An early look at the toolbar PR update and how directories are faring is not very positive, so far many big players have lost 1 level of page rank, here is the early list:

http://www.idk.in/ PR5 to PR4
http://www.bigweblinks.com/ PR7 to PR6
http://www.allthelook.com/ PR5 to PR4
http://www.aerospect.com/ PR5 to PR4
http://www.kwikgoblin.com/ PR6 to PR5
http://www.apahcinc.org/ PR6 to PR5
http://www.sevenseek.com/ PR6 to PR5
http://directory.v7n.com/ PR6 to PR5
http://www.danielmillions.com/ PR5 to PR4
http://www.linksjuice.com PR6 to PR5
http://www.leadingdir.com/ PR5 to PR4
http://www.linksfactory.net/ PR6 to PR5
http://www.sleekdirectory.com/ PR5 to PR4

What does this mean for directories?  I don’t think it means too much, perhaps Google has updated their algorithm so it is harder for all sites to obtain a high page rank.  I remember around 7 months ago everyone was saying it had seemed to get easier to get a page rank of 4 and higher so maybe Google just tweaked it back the other way.  I don’t think a little loss of page rank means much for the directory industry as a whole because directory backlinks are still one of the easiest and most cost effective ones out there.

Since mid August the directory world has been buzzing about penalties and mysterious disappearances from Googles search engine rank positions.  Over at DigitalPoint Forums there has been tons of threads discussing this issue to death.  Many new forum posters that have never been seen around the directory forums have magically appeared to tout their opinions on what Google is doing and why.  There have even been directory owners purging their souls and begging Google not to smite them down, professing to have purchased links to obtain higher page rank and asking for the Google spies to please not further damage their business because they have seen the light and will not do these bad things again.

Really it has turned into a three ring circus with 3 major camps, the dooms-day prophets, stating that this is the beginning of the end and starting attention grabbing threads titled “Is Directory Business OVER!!! “, “Do you think “The Directory Business has Ended” and my personal favorite going strong after 29 days, “It’s official Google has opened up a can of whoop ass on directories”

Secondly there is a camp that is a little more low-key and not so excitable but they are looking for the reasons behind what has happened to see if there is any legitimacy to the rumors.  They start threads with more common sense names like, “Analysis of Google’s Directory Penalty” and “Directory Penalization Round 2″ — Their reasoning runs the entire gambit of educated guesses to pure speculation to hopeful prayer.

Last but not least there are some folks, like myself that have tried to add a little levity to the situation and call for more level-headedness and calm.  Let’s wait and see how this thing plays out, let’s wait for some facts before proclaiming the sky is falling.  I even posted a humorous thread (well I thought it was funny) linking to this blog post, Finally Contact from Mattt Cuttts on Penalties and it promptly got moved and buried.  Some loved it, I received rep with these comments: LMAO, that was great! to comments like: You are an idiot this is a serious topic!

I will sum up my thoughts and feeling by quoting a few things I have posted recently: 

No one really knows what gooogle is doing, so in order to give some type of freshness to this debate I think everyone needs to wait until some more facts are available, the proverbial ‘dead horse’ has been beaten to dust.

There has been no proof or substantiating comments from gooogle, so it is still not clear how or why or even ‘if’ there were penalties.

If there was penalties why does it seem blogs and other websites have been hit as well and why does it appear sites that have not bought or sold links have been effected. Why also does it seem 1000’s of other sites that blatantly buy or sell links (I have an example of maxlinks in another thread) have escaped unscathed? Why are the supposedly penalized sites making it back in the SERPs now? Why did they continue to be indexed at all? Why were they still ranking well for certain keywords (I mentioned one of my directories does not rank for it’s name but still achieved it’s highest rank for ‘web directory’ during this supposed ”penalization”). There are just too many unanswered questions for folks to be making blanket statements like that, it is not only unprofessional but makes people sound petty and jealous.