This is a question on which I have thought long and hard, and am yet to reach upon a decision. Directories have been around for years, and are seen by many webmasters as one of the  easiest ways to make money, apart from setting up a blog and putting up Adsense on it. And the  recent Google crackdown on the industry has stirred up a debate which has seen former friends becoming enemies , taking shots at each other.

Let us be honest here. Google’s Pagerank system, which is solely based on the number of inbound links to your site, gave rise to the idea of a directory. The idea looks excellent on paper.

1.)Buy tons of links and promote your directory very well.  There are various means on promotion- blog posts, signature links, avatars on forums, sponsoring themes and other contests to name a few.

2.) Get yourself a good pagerank by virtue of those links, and advertise your site as a’powerful’ directory. Since your pages have good standing in Google, people will be willing to pay for a link in that. Directories offer regular links, featured links. Some also offer deep links ( Links to your inner pages).

On the web, people buy links for two reasons- Page Rank and Traffic. Somewhere down the line, the two are connected.  If you have pagerank, it means that people link to you, and since people link to you, Google thinks you worthy enough to be ranked. Since you rank well, you obviously get a lot of visitors courtesy G, and get classified as a high traffic site. Links are not the only thing on which rankings depend, but they certainly account for a significant chunk of it.

There aren’t too many external tools that tell you about the traffic that  a site gets. Alexa is one such tool, but the problem lies in the fact that you need to have the Alexa Toolbar installed in your browser for your visit to figure in their rankings.

Now the problem with Alexa is that the average man on the street has no idea about what it is. People are also generally wary about installing third party applications unless they are completely satisfied that it is safe. Webmasters account for a fair amount of Alexa users. Therefore sites which are run and promoted by webmasters tend to have an higher Alexa rank than others. That includes directories and other websites that are in some way SEO or webmaster based. Webmasters do have other interests in addition to SEO- soccer, music, health to name a few.

I wouldn’t get into the buying/selling links debate at this moment.  That will be for another time.

Directories to tend to be used more offline than online. And since the majority of the people who know the edge that directories can give to you because their pages are strong are webmasters. What is the final result ? Most webmasters buy links in each other’s directories. So without intending it to be, it becomes a circle of sorts. X directory buys a spot in Y, and Y also has a presence in X.  Paid directories generally tend to have lots of common websites listed within them. And some paid directories have empty categories, because people haven’t submitted to them. When you want your directory to be a resource, can you keep empty categories ? I’m afraid not.

There are some directories which allow non profit organizations to list for free. Some owners go to great lengths to find good sites to populate their empty categories. Sadly those owners are in a minority. And as for the listings, MFA’s will be rejected. But because the listings are paid, some sites which should never have made the cut get in. They aren’t crappy, but by no means are they great either. They come somewhere in the middle, and because money is involved, the directory owner puts them in rather than rejecting them.

Does the average man really go to directories when he wants to find a site ? The answer, 99 out of hundred times is no. Search engines might direct the user to the category concerned, which tends to be empty ( in case of paid directories), or fully filled with crappy listings ( free directories- the owner doesn’t have the time to manually go through each site). The end result- the user is dissatisfied, and doesn’t get what he wants. What is supposed to be your aim when you start a site ? Help the user while making money for yourself. Sadly, the objective of helping the customer is not fulfilled.

There are a few genuinely good directories in the world. Most of them do have paid links pointing to them, but they do list only good sites, and are not greedy enough to take every site submitted. Such directories by and far, are hard to find.

Many directories use the same script. The result- they have the same categories. Creating custom categories is not an easy job and people don’t want to work hard.

If Pagerank is removed, will people submit to directories ? If it is publicly proclaimed that listings on directories won’t affect your search rankings even a teeny weeny bit, will people still submit ? For purely traffic ? There will be a  sharp decline in the number of submissions. The big ones will remain, but most of the smaller directories will pack their bags and leave the industry. Should the no follow tag be enforced on all listings, including the sitewide ones ?

Your thoughts ??