Seems Google still likes directories. I have seen a number of directories gain a good level of PR during the most recent update (the end of Feb 08). Also several have become ‘hubs’ as far as Google is concerned as they have achieved the much sort after extra links when searched in Google. Clearly neither of these things would have happened if Google was penalizing directories, and it shows they are very much regarded as useful. Directory Rate had a little bit of love from Google too, going from a PR3 to a PR4 in the most recent update, which by all accounts is not bad in our industry. The next DR update is due, we aim to complete this by the 10th of March, there will be some changes this time round that will allow directory owners to view their rank among all the other directories in our lists both for the current month and historically, so you will be able to follow whether your directory goes up 20 places, down 15 places, how its rank has changed over 6 months etc, kind of like a chart listing. Hopefully this will be both interesting and maybe a little fun for directory owners. See you again soon! Filed under: General by PhilNo Comments » |
We have now run our monthly DR update for February for all our listed directories, there’s been a few movements, the most notable of which is My Green Corner rising to second spot in our Top 50 Directories listed by DR. In addition to this months DR update, and as promised last month, we have now included a search function on our home page to allow you to easily find you directory’s page on our site, just type your directory’s URL in the search box and select it from the list that appears! If you managed to break our search function, or it returns strange results, please let us know, we have tested it on a few browsers but not all so your feedback would be appreciated. That’s all for now! Filed under: General by PhilNo Comments » |
After Googles recent PR update, we have now updated all our listed directories PR accordingly. Our own measure, DR, will be updated again early February. We are now closing in on our current target of 1500 directories, we had hoped to have achieved this by the end of December but it was not to be, so our new target for 1500 listed directories is the end of January. Our next target after 1500, will be 2000, and we are hopeful of reaching this target by the end of March, but time will tell We would like to thank all those who submitted their directories, get ratings on Directory Rate from their users, and also our advertisers, without whom Directory Rate couldn’t continue. Keep your submissions coming! Filed under: General by PhilNo Comments » |
Just a quick one to let you know we have finally launched our Webmaster Directory. Our aim is for this to become a central resource for webmasters, giving them a one stop location where they can find any type of site the may need in relation to their webmaster activities. You can add your own webmaster related resource, or simply browse the directory, by going to the Webmaster Directory link at the top of the page. Filed under: General by PhilNo Comments » |
Here’s a post I made on Digital Point regarding Adsense, reproduced here for posterity :) I see so many threads started on DP regarding Adsense users being banned, seemingly everyday a member posts how they have been banned but have done nothing wrong, below I will attempt to cover the methods Google MAY use to determine behaviour which contravenes their TOS and results in a user being banned. Firstly, there is one blatantly obvious reason for being banned which everybody knows about and everybody who has an Adsense account (and wants to keep it) should never break, and that’s the ‘don’t click on your own ads’ rule (along with ‘don’t get other people to click on your ads’). Additionally there is the possibility that a user could be banned for creating too many impressions of the ads shown on their own sites, so don’t view your own sites pages to much when showing Adsense ads on it. If you are doing development or testing that will result in you viewing your own sites Adsense ads more than would be reasonable, you should disable the ads until your work is complete. Now, going back to the ‘being banned for clicking your own ads’ scenario. What seems to happen is some people with Adsense accounts think they are smarter than Google and can find ways to ‘fool’ Google into believing the clicks they (or their friends/accomplices) make on their own sites ads are valid, this is the mistake that puts the nail in the coffin of their Adsense career. So the following is some info to those people with Adsense who will be thinking about trying to fool Google, and in a few months will be posting on DP about how they were unjustifiably banned. Google has many ways to determine click validity, the first mistake Adsense fraudsters make is to believe that making the fraudulent clicks from different IP addresses is enough to convince Google the clicks are valid, its not. Think about the information Google has at its disposal to detect fake clicks:
So what does the above tell you? That’s right, you really cant fool Google. They have so much information available to them to see if your site fits within the expected range of Adsense earnings for your particular site that it is probably laughably easy for them to see when there is fraudulent activity. Bottom line, don’t click your own ads and don’t get others to click the ads for you, either way Google will spot it and the next thing you will know is you cant login to your Adsense account and there is a nice email from them telling you have been banned, and then you’ll be posting on DP about how they banned you for no reason, they don’t ban anyone or no reason, taking into account the above you can assume they can be 99% certain someone is trying to fool them, so don’t do it! Filed under: Google, General by PhilNo Comments » |
We have been busy over the last few weeks tweaking (or rather rewriting) the DR strength algo, we completed this work yesterday and ran an update of all the listed directories DR scores which you can now see represented in the various lists. The DR update see’s some major changes in the top 10 with the previous table toppers Alive and Aviva dropping away somewhat and the number 1 spot now being taken up by Directory Journal. Our revision of the DR algo was necessary as we were having problems with the previous version taking far too long to run an update and therefore making it impossible to carry out our desired monthly updates of the DR strength scores. The new DR algo approaches the scoring of directories from a different angle (technically speaking) than before and consequently we can now run a complete update of all our listed directories DR in less than half a day. We continue to leave the DR strength system in beta for the time being so don’t be surprised if we make some more tweaks, however we are now confident the system is scoring directories well and, just as importantly, is scalable when it comes to running updates on large numbers of listed directories. Filed under: General by PhilNo Comments » |
We reached our goal of 1000 directories successfully before the end of October, we are pretty happy with this achievement but are looking to improve even further. Obviously there’s a finite number of directories we can included as there are only so many in existence, but we see no reason why eventually our lists wont run to around the 5000 mark. Our next goal is to reach 1500 by the end of December, fingers crossed we make it. Google finally completed their long overdue PageRank update and consequently we have now updated the PR numbers for all the directories in our lists. Additionally we are due to run an update on our own DR numbers in the next week or two so if you have a directory listed look out soon to see if your DR makes any gains Dont forget, you can include our listings on your own site using our new widget, check out the blog post for details. Filed under: General by PhilNo Comments » |
Looks like Google is finally updating its PageRank values, many directories as well as all other sites are seeing changes (more specifically drops) in their PR. With regard to our own lists of directories and the PageRank displayed for each one, we will be carrying out a refresh of the PageRank values as soon as it looks like Google has finished updating, so please bear with us if some of the PR values we are showing for directories appear to be incorrect. As mentioned, it appears most directories Page Rank values are dropping, with seemingly none at all actually going up. As this seems to be happening across all sites, not just directories, it would appear to be a new move being made by Google, whether it’s a move to simply raise the bar of what a site needs to do to get a good Page Rank, or whether its possibly the start of a gradual decommissioning of the whole PR method of rating sites we have yet to see. Fingers crossed they haven’t decided to axe it entirely as it would be a significant blow to the prospects of the directory industry and would see the whole sector shrink as a result, lets hope Google plays fair. Filed under: General by PhilNo Comments » |
We’ve been working on a widget that allows anyone to include our directory lists within their own website, any list displayed on your site will update automatically everyday! The Basics We’ve tried to make it as simple as possible for you to add our lists to your site, to add a list in its most basic form, just drop the following code into your page: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.directoryrate.com/widgets/get_listing.php?list=listings"></script> This basic list will give you the top ten directories from Directory Rate, ordered by DR. Customizing the List To help users better integrate the lists into their sites, we have added various options that can affect the output of the directory list that gets displayed. All options are triggered by adding them into the query string of the URL used to access the lists, below are the various customizable options available:
Some Examples To get you started and give an idea of how to use the customization options, here’s a couple of examples. So, starting with our basic listing URL, which is:
Imagine now we want to show 50 directories rather than the default 10, so our URL becomes:
Now imagine we want 50 directories, we want to show the PR for each one and we want them displayed in a table rather than a list, so our URL becomes:
Hopefully these examples are enough to show you how to customize your list, don’t forget the URL needs to be wrapped in a Javascript tag like this: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.directoryrate.com/widgets/get_listing.php?list=listings"></script> Finally Whilst we have tested it quite heavily, we cant tell for sure we covered everything whilst building this widget, therefore if you have any problems please email us details of what happened when you tried to use it and if possible give us the URL where you installed it so we can take a look and try and fix it for you. info(at)directoryrate.com Filed under: General by PhilNo Comments » |
The Progess… We now have nearly 850 directories listed, which is a great achievement and puts us well on the way to achieving our next goal of 1000 by the end of October. Keep those submissions coming! We are working on a customizable widget which will allow our lists of directories to be included in your own sites, it will be completely free for you to use and we aim to have it ready by the end of October, we will post full details here when its ready along with instructions on its use. King of Directories is almost ready to roll, though we are a little apprehensive about this part of the Directory Rate project as there seems to be so many ‘best directory’ competitions around already, however we will go through with our plans for King of Directories and hope it will become the most sought after virtual trophy in the directory industry Last of all, after several requests, we are building a webmaster directory of our own which will be part of the main Directory Rate site. This directory will launch, like most things it seems right now, by the end of October, we’ll post here when its ready for submissions, check back for details soon. The Hold Ups… Seems Yahoo is having some difficulties, their API for in-link reporting is all over the place currently and getting consistent reliable results is proving impossible. As you know, back links are part of the algo we use to calculate DR and therefore right now our submission approval for directories is being hampered, typically newly submitted directories are taking around a week to approve, we hope to get this figure down to around 48 hours within the next 4-6 weeks so please bear with us if your directory is taking a little longer than normal to approve. Filed under: General by PhilNo Comments » |

