Directories and PR0 - How to Avoid it?

[Nick W]

Hi all,

I was recently going through a list of directories a friend compiled that all passed PR from their pages. This list is a few months old I think..

Many of the sites have PR on the homepage but the directories are now all PR0. As im planning a directory (not a traditional many links per cat page like Dmoz/Y!) im rather keen to avoid hitting a penalty right at the start.

Does anyone have any information as to what triggers this and how to avoid it? - Tested/proven info would be really appreciated ;-)

Many thanks...

Nick

[seobook]

I think as long as you use decent directory software and do not allow super sketchy sites into your directory you should be fine.

most directory lists on the web suck. that is part of the reason I am going to (and have slowly started to) make a good one.

[stoner3221]

Hi all,

I was recently going through a list of directories a friend compiled that all passed PR from their pages. This list is a few months old I think..

Many of the sites have PR on the homepage but the directories are now all PR0. As im planning a directory (not a traditional many links per cat page like Dmoz/Y!) im rather keen to avoid hitting a penalty right at the start.

Does anyone have any information as to what triggers this and how to avoid it? - Tested/proven info would be really appreciated ;-)

Many thanks...

Nick


Most of the directories I have found with PR 0 are new and have yet to be ranked. The home page PR however is not as important as the PR of the topic pages. These take quite some time to develop PR on and greatly depend on the volume content of the topic pages and the number of pages of the directory indexed by Google. A page that is indexed in Google normally gets at least a PR 3 if it has sufficient content, verses a page with good content and not indexed by Google frequently has no or very low PR. On the other side of the coin are pages with excessive content. They also rank lower even when indexed by Google.

Directories can get confusing but will give you the strongest link if they are well indexed like DMOZ, JoeAnt, Skaffe, Gimpsy, BlueFind, GoGuides, and IllumiRate are and you submit to a page that has PR on it.

When you plan on building a directory have an established well thought out topic structure so you can from the very start develop Page Rank. You want to be able to keep your topics small, not more then 50 links to a topic when possible and use a script with static linking. In two months even with very little content you will have PR3 or 4 and content development will bring it to PR 5 fairly fast.

[Nick W]

Firstly, thanks for the great answers, most of it is self evident though, im not really looking for advice on how to buíld, but more, how to avoid the PR0 thingy ;-)

Good stuff nonetheless, thanks.

>>bluefind

This is one that illustrates my point well I think, take a look: PR0 on most of it, the only top level cat that has PR is Business and the subdirs do not have PR -> the rest of the directory is all PR0 as far as I can see...

And I found a whole bunch more like that...

NB: Im running the toolbar on IE on Linux: maybe it's faulty? - Do you guys see what I see on bluefind?

Thanks again..

Nick

[stoner3221]

BlueFind is new and has yet to develop sufficient content in the topic pages. It should start to see PR development on the topic pages in the next PR update. It’s well indexed by Google and is a good candidate for high PR pages. Since it’s a pay for inclusion directory it will not develop PR as fast as a free directory does.

[seobook]

BlueFind is new and has yet to develop sufficient content in the topic pages. It should start to see PR development on the topic pages in the next PR update. It�s well indexed by Google and is a good candidate for high PR pages. Since it�s a pay for inclusion directory it will not develop PR as fast as a free directory does.

the pagerank is not necissarily a measure of the quality of the give page or even what content is on it. it is a measure of link popularity. no more, no less.

John's Bluefind is still having the topical structure filled out. Many of the categories are still new, but eventually the PageRank will filter down through all the inner pages. Another thing he did at Bluefind recently is shorten the URLs, which meant some of the pages will take an extra month to show PageRank at the new locations. Keep in mind that the visual display pagerank lags actual pagerank.

the reason a free directory is likely to build pagerank quicker is that more people are likely to want to link to you for free. you may even have someone ask you questions for an article which gets syndicated at places like searchengineguide and webproworld and causes you to get tons of links and submissions and makes you need to work a really really really long work day. when I say you I am talking to Bruce of Wow Directory...also known as stoner. didn't I interview you recently? :)

[Nick W]

Ahhhh.. now I see ;-)

I was under the impression bluefind was an established directory LoL!
I'll go through my list tommorow a little more thoroughly and see if I can find some good examples, it may well be that the sites I saw with PR0 are all new, but I think not..

I remember reading about directories getting PR0'd some time back so it's the first thing that jumped to mind...

Thanks guys..

FYI the directory structure I had in mind was this:

10 sites per page but no link to the site. The link goes to the sites own page in the directory where it has it's link out to the site in question. (that page is permenant, it wont be moved or altered regardless of category changes etc) It's a 'showcase' if you will. Not a traditional directory at all but similar enough to have me thinking about issues relating to directories of couse...

Thanks again....

Nick

[stoner3221]

the pagerank is not necissarily a measure of the quality of the give page or even what content is on it. it is a measure of link popularity. no more, no less.

John's Bluefind is still having the topical structure filled out. Many of the categories are still new, but eventually the PageRank will filter down through all the inner pages. Another thing he did at Bluefind recently is shorten the URLs, which meant some of the pages will take an extra month to show PageRank at the new locations. Keep in mind that the visual display pagerank lags actual pagerank.

the reason a free directory is likely to build pagerank quicker is that more people are likely to want to link to you for free. you may even have someone ask you questions for an article which gets syndicated at places like searchengineguide and webproworld and causes you to get tons of links and submissions and makes you need to work a really really really long work day. when I say you I am talking to Bruce of Wow Directory...also known as stoner. didn't I interview you recently? :)

You most certainly did. My staff jumped the boat and swam to shore leaving me to do it alone. I’m caught up finally! LOL

[Nick W]

I rather enjoyed that interview, nice directory (godawful color scheme LoL!) stoner ;-)

Nick

[Nick W]

I take it back! I take it back!

You've updated... ahhhh.. ..... much nicer ;)

Nick

[stoner3221]

I take it back! I take it back!

You've updated... ahhhh.. ..... much nicer ;)

Nick


I have made a few changes recently and we will be doing a full script upgrade when Google finishes indexing the pages. As soon as I did these minor changes Google dropped over 60,000 pages but the numbers are starting to climb again. Google is a temperamental cuss to say the least.

[JohnScott]

>>bluefind

This is one that illustrates my point well I think, take a look: PR0 on most of it, the only top level cat that has PR is Business and the subdirs do not have PR -> the rest of the directory is all PR0 as far as I can see...

We actually had a mod_rewrite done, and all the category URLs changed. Thus the PR0. New pages=no PR.

In the last PR update, most of the pages got PR, and pretty good PR. We got one more PR8 page in there, and in some places the PR is distributed very nicely into the lower-level categories as well.


http://www.bluefind.com/ - PR8

Go one level down:

http://www.bluefind.com/dir/4.php - PR7

Go deeper:

http://www.bluefind.com/dir/7547.php - PR7

Go deeper:

http://www.bluefind.com/dir/7668.php - PR7

Go deeper:

http://www.bluefind.com/dir/7846.php - PR7

Still deeper:

http://www.bluefind.com/dir/7874.php - PR7

It came in the nick of time, too. A lot of uninformed people were seeing the PR0 on the interior pages and suggesting that we had been penalized by Google.