If you’re thinking about submitting your web site to a web directory then you should read this article.

Google has recently culled or penalised many popular web directories for selling their services and listings based on passing on PageRank (or link juice). This contradicts Googles (and other Search Engines) guidelines and so Google has taken action on many web directories. Their policy is strangely inconsistent because there are many lower ranking web directories that obviously flout the Search Engine guidelines but they still seem (for the moment) to be able to pass on PageRank to web sites in their directory. I’m guessing that the latest cull is a shot across the bow sending out a warning to all the web directories that manipulating Search Engines and selling listings based on passing on PageRank rather than creating a relevant resource for web users will no longer be tolerated.

Unfortunately Google hasn’t penalised the web directories by taking away the PageRank so anyone who’s unaware of the latest directory cull will see that the PageRank for the directory is still good so will very likely buy in the the web directory. They may as well throw their money away because it’s likely the web directory or directories don’t get any traffic from Google and the directories in question don’t pass on any of their high PageRank.

How do I know if a web directory has been panalised?

The easiest way is to do a search for the name of the directory for example I’ll use linksfactory.net

This has a respectable PageRank of 6 so with out a doubt if I type in the name “links factory” (with or without the quotes) it should be at the top of the search results. Even if I type in the title of the web site it doesn’t show up in Googles search results. The only way to see if the web directory is still in the Google index is to type the domain name into the search in this case it’s linksfactory.net. This is a prime example of how Google has all but kicked what it deems to be SPAM web directories out of the Google index.