Big tangle directory - the rebirth
Anyone who follows webmaster forums will know that directories have taken a bit of a knock recently. Some appear to have been penalised by google, possibly for link buying and selling, perhaps temporarily perhaps permanently.
Be that as it may, as a result of the ‘discussions’ that have resulted I now have a much clearer sense of the direction that big tangle will take in the future.
Curiously, although for my other sites I was only interested in attracting relevant inks, for directories my thoughts have always been towards finding links for pagerank. It is now clear to me that directories must be like any other site - interesting, relevant, and containing useful information in the form of recommended sites.
With hindsight I can’t see why I missed this obvious point - I’m just slow I guess. A link from a relevant page with PR1 is better than an irrelevant link with PR4. I always knew it for other sites, but missed it for directories.
I don’t intend to add RSS feeds, artificial content, or any other contrivance to fool search engines. I do intend to add sites when I see fit, if they are important for a category. To have a search engine category that didn’t include google, for example, would make no sense.
We will slowly remove any sitewide links, and review existing sites to see if they meet our new, stricter guidelines (most were added when the directory was free - paid links will not be reviewed or removed until their validity expires, of course). The category structure will be improved if necessary.
Site submission fees will be kept low for the time being, and a site that is rejected will receive a refund of their fees. Partly to encourage submissions, partly because submissions might otherwise stop completely, but mainly because I think it is the correct approach. Even if people are not buying page rank, they are buying a listing in the directory - if someone wanted their site reviewed they wouldn’t ask us, they’d ask a web designer, SEO expert, etc. So the payment is for a listing, not for a review - and time spent reviewing unsuitable sites is just part of what we must do to have a successful directory.
Links that fail copyscape checks will either be rewritten or removed, other descriptions will be improved where necessary. The goal is that within six months we have a leaner, more useful directory. In principle that will attract submissions in itself, despite the directory only having a PR4-5.
This week I listed a site in yahoo directory, last week in botw. For neither of them was pagerank an issue. That is our new goal for bigtangle. Will people submit when the page they will be listed on will be less than PR3? Time will tell.
When the news first broke about the penalties imposed on directories I thought it would be the end of the ’secondary’ directory business. My initial reactions, I now believe, were wrong. The directory industry is about to enter a new, improved, phase and bigtangle intends to be part of it.