directory links & number of links on the page

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Are links from directory-type websites treated differently?

Or is it all in the number of links on a certain page (or on the website in general?!).

In other words, I'm wondering - if I go after niche directory websites that lack a certain category of products (for which I'd have a US-wide directory on my website (it'd fit in very well))...and get them to want to complete their site and link to my page on this..

Another example would be a directory on about.com..where the links are somewhat carefully selected (approx. 2 links / state + every state having a different page). Would such a link help "quite a bit", or does Google (or Bing) treat links from obvious directory-like websites differently in general?

Any (anecdotal) evidence, that links from directory kind of websites (that dont have 100s of outbound links, but carefully selected) on authoritative domains do help significantly? ...Or (anecdotal) evidence, that Google treats all directories as low-quality links?

thanks!

[jag]

Human edited directory is the one you should choose first. They might have control on displaying links on page to page. Then Niche directory that has a direct link to your site and surrounded with stuff related to your theme. Regional / local directory helps with geo based listing. General directory with related category and no too many links in category page. Link juice differs as per TLD directories and authoritative domains. Algorithm should be having a list of Best, Good and Bad site (backlinks) lol

[AussieWebmaster]

the directories the engines respect generally have human editors and can be seen by their ranking though niched ones if decent with good content etc beyond the paid listing should get some lift too

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Thanks for the info guys.

Do you have any idea if they treat directory type of websites differently in general, though? Or is it really just about how much pagerank the page bleeds (if it has 100s of outbound links)?

@Aussiewebmaster:

the part that it can be seen by their ranking does help me out in one case, actually - sounds like the directory on about.com (that does rank high for relevant searches) will indeed be a good one to get!

@jag (or anyone else who knows for that matter):

Regional / local directory helps with geo based listing.

Are local links (very?) important for the maps listing? dont know enough about this one, yet..

[BrianCosgrove]

With a few small exceptions (DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory,...) most directories are just other websites that have a bunch of links. Most of them aren't worth paying for. A few (the ones you keep seeing over and over again with links to them) are. The more they link to good sites, the better it will be for you. The more they link to bad sites, the worse. Ideally you'll want the following to be true: 1.) its indexed and ranking in the top 30 for its title tag, 2.) There are less than 100 sites on that category, 3.) the page you'll be on is less than 5 clicks from the homepage, 4.) the category isn't pagenated so that you'll be on page 20, 5.) the directory looks like it's well maintained and organized, 6.) the links do not go through redirects and are not JavaScript, 7.) the links do not have the rel="nofollow" attribute, The page does not have the meta name="robots" content="nofollow" meta tag.