Up & Coming Directories

Which directories do you think have the best shot at competing with Yahoo! and the ODP?

Even though they are not to popular for their practices with regards to price change etc. I think Looksmart will be in a position to contend as they generate huge revenue from the M$ partnership

This is a far too early stage for most of the 'up and coming' directories to be considered competitors to the likes of Yahoo and ODP.

Directory take a lot of effort / time to build. Yahoo had the advantage of being the FIRST directory, and DMOZ has the advantage of using many thousands of volunteers. Having said that - it is probably the endoresment of Google for the later that makes it such a valuable listing place.

I only have good knowledge of one Directory, Gimpsy, and I can see the amazing advance in traffic from month to month. Looking at Alexa, it seems that Joeant, Goguides and Exactseek are climbing very steeply too,

Which one of them will generate the breakthrough from the second tier to the first tier is a highly speculative question. Each has some unique features and some following.

Any thoughts?

MC

I never see any mention of zeal .. fantastic system, and very dedicated volunteers.

Non-commercial yes, but I love it.

AhmedF, Zeal is owned by LookSmart and in fact, the two directories are somewhat merged.

well submissions directly through zeal are non-commercial ... the looksmart ones are commercial in there, but overall, zeal is far better for INFORMATION than yahoo or ODP any day.

yeah...if you dont mind the 'final exam' part.

NO directory can compete with ODP directory

"NO directory can compete with ODP directory"

I disagree with that. there will eventually be better ways of doing things. many people have lots of issues with the ODP

One of the best ways to judge a directory is to see how many pages it has indexed and the PR of its secondary pages. Webmasters want links from a directory and by far JoeAnt is way ahead of the pack of directories considered minor. Since I’m in the business it would be unprofessional to rank other directories but some of the directories considered really good at one time are now running on hot air and past reputation. There are a lot of new directories out now that are very search engine friendly and far more responsive to the needs of webmasters and literally kicking the pants off some of the former big players.



I agree with awall19 about DMOZ. They have failed to meet consumer needs and their reputation has seriously been damaged. “who said Dinosaurs were dead”

DMOZ - Do Move Over Zombies.. ie.. asleep.. takes ages to get listed.

I've always wondered about Yahoo Directory, is it really worth the £299 a year you have to pay - okay you get another backlink, but is that it?

I used to think that way before becoming an editor guys, but honestly there is a huge active thriving community over at Dmoz, and speaking for myself I have 0 submissions at the moment, why? Because I sign in at least 3 times a week to edit. And there are thousands of editors like me. The main problem that most people have is they go for a high pagerank page that is more generic then their site belongs, and seeing as everyone goes for it there are tens of thousands of entries and it becomes an insurmoutable task.

My suggestion is go for the most specific category you can, narrow it down and find that perfect spot where you belong (Not every Hotels site belongs in the main "Hotels" category)

No editor for that very specific category of yours? Why not become part of the solution and apply as an editor. If you are honest and follow the guidelines then you will get accepted
Just my 2 cents as I sit here with strup throat on Sunday Morning

I offered to be an editor of a new category a couple days ago. Don't know if they will take me up on it but if they do I'll go there at least once a week to add sites.

John Scott is putting a lot of effort into Bluefind.

none of the PR there is transfering to any of the categories...