Some Free Directory Listings Moved to Duds

Although I have not had any problems with free directories that use 302 redirects on their links, I'm opting to follow the collective experience of other SEOs and move all listings of free directories that utilize 302 redirects to my "Duds" page. I am doing this to make it clearer that these directories could cause problems and won't benefit you with any PageRank credit.

I have also moved a couple of other directories to the "Duds" category because they appear to have fallen from Google's grace.

There has been a lot of talk recently about whether Google is declaring war on directories (free or paid). The directory category at the ODP has been PR0 for a couple of toolbar updates and it does appear that some directories have recently been de-listed, banned and/or penalized for some reason. The collective forum speak seems to hone in on AdSense, scraper sites, type of script, empty categories and possible duplicate content issues.

While I have not yet seen any definitive data on this new situation, I believe it comes down to the quality and uniqueness of the directory. A lot of these banned sites appear to all be using the same directory script and are pretty much cookie cutter templates. Some I have seen, haven't even taken the time to change some of the default text, such as "add whatever text here" sort of thing. I can't remember where I saw a couple of those, but I didn't add them to my reviews.

I will continue to monitor this situation and hope to see some hard data on this soon.

Please feel free to comment below or email me by clicking on my name.

martin