Which are the best online directories.

sparky28

Hi everyone,
I have been reading a lot of posts on Boards in relation to the pros and cons of placing an ad on an online business directory. Some people seem to question the real value that these directories can offer to your business. I have decided to run a small survey for anyone who might be interested in taking part. I googled "online directory" today at 12pm and the following are some of the results which appeared on the first page.
www.yourlocal.ie, www.needit.ie, www.goldenpages.ie, www.whatswhat.ie, www.doli.ie, www.niceone.com, www.qeedle.com, www.theweb.ie, www.bizzone.ie

If anyone fancy's it, maybe have a quick look at each of these directories and rate them out of 10 using the following criteria. Design, functionality, Quality of Ad, Information Provided, User Friendliness, and whatever else you fancy. It doesnt have to be too scientific but it would be interesting to get an appraisal from accross the board. Looking forward to some replies.

jmcc

sparky28 wrote: »

www.yourlocal.ie,

Crap. Lack of content.Designed by people who couldn't think like users.

www.needit.ie,

Not a bad design but runs into the content problem.

www.goldenpages.ie,

What the hell were these guys on when they thought they could design an online directory?

www.whatswhat.ie,

A lot of effort and money seem to have gone into this one.

www.doli.ie,

Ok but local.

www.niceone.com,

A directory that makes my HTML look good by comparison. Don't think it has been updated for about ten years or so. Unsafe viewing for web designers of a delicate disposition. Very disturbing.

www.qeedle.com,

Hits the content problem too early.

www.theweb.ie,

Probably seemed like a good idea at the time and was never finished. Parts seem to be missing.

www.bizzone.ie

Twitter feed seems dead. Looks like a GP effort for businesses with phone numbers and addresses.

Regards...jmcc

Chet Zar

Am I the only one who thinks online directories are a pretty quaint, late 1990s notion at this stage?

sparky28

jmcc wrote: »

What the hell were these guys on when they thought they could design an online directory?

Regards...jmcc

I agree totally. The more I look into this the more I realise that their design and layout does nothing for the clients who have placed ad's with them. I was very shocked when they quoted me prices for their payed listings. It's not good value for money.

sparky28

Chet Zar wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks online directories are a pretty quaint, late 1990s notion at this stage?

I think they still have a role to play in helping smaller businesses develop an online presence. If your business doesn't show up on the first or second page of a Google search then realistically, you wont be found. If an online directory is well designed, structured, populated, and user friendly and couples this with decent marketing so that it becomes a well known brand in itself, it can at this point offer a value added service to business once the price is seen to be good value.

jmcc

Chet Zar wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks online directories are a pretty quaint, late 1990s notion at this stage?

Perhaps. I still think that a good directory can beat a search engine like Google because the directory is human curated. This means that unlike the simplistic "spider everything and hope the algorithm will work" approach used by Google, the directory owners approve the sites that appear.

In terms of country code TLDs like .ie, .uk etc, Google is vulnerable because its blind crawling approach doesn't work. New websites often don't have any inbound links and unless they are using Google Analytics or Adsense, then they are invisible to search engines like Google and Bing. The inclusion of a new site in a directory is often the first sign of it for Google. This is where the small directories have the edge on the larger search engines. They small directories are often local and so are the markets for many sites. The site owners may expect Google et al to automatically find a new site but they will often submit their site to the dominant local directory. Google and the other search engines benefit from this because some of the assessment of the quality and locale of a website has been done for them.

Regards...jmcc

sparky28

jmcc wrote: »

A
Hits the content problem too early.

Regards...jmcc

Hi JMCC,
Thanks for your input into the discussion. Not too sure what you mean by "the content problem", could you expand.

jmcc

sparky28 wrote: »

Hi JMCC,
Thanks for your input into the discussion. Not too sure what you mean by "the content problem", could you expand.

The content problem is where a directory seems to have more pages than websites listed. Basically many small directories start out as sidelines/hobby sites for web developers. Once they get to a certain stage, it becomes more difficult to find websites. At that point many give up but some do not.

The alternatives are a Dmoz seed (where the directory integrates the DMOZ/Ireland section) or a user submission system. The problem with DMOZ is that its structure sucks because a few years ago, some people there made the decision to explode the Ireland heirarchy with every tiny townland and village. The result was a pile of no-content webpages. The user submission problem is also a tough one because it relies on users to submit new sites. This gets overwhelmed by dodgy SEO people submitting wildly off-target sites. The other side of the user submission problem is that it depends on a sufficient number of users viewing the site and a sufficient number of submissions each month to compensate for the sites that disappear each month.

For 01/November/2011 to 01/December/2011, approximately 5520 Irish hosted domains were deleted (some were transferred out of Irish webspace) but approximately 8232 new domains appeared. Not all of these new domains will have active websites but it would be around 3.5K potentially new websites in that period. That's just one month. There is also a lag between a domain being registered and an active website appearing with that domain. A lot of new domains go straight to holding page or PPC parked status.

Classifying domain usage (active/PPC/holding pages/duplicate content etc) is actually quite a difficult task and most web devs have no idea of how to do it properly (neither have Google or Bing). A directory is, often, a manual attempt to do this. What clobbers most is that manual processes do not scale well and the numbers of new websites quickly overwhelms the directory operator. However the idea that the web is a static, unchanging set of websites is wrong it changes a lot more than people realise.

Regards...jmcc

sparky28

jmcc wrote: »

For 01/November/2011 to 01/December/2011, approximately 5520 Irish hosted domains were deleted (some were transferred out of Irish webspace) but approximately 8232 new domains appeared.
Regards...jmcc

I think directories which are simply an online reference for website listings are most definately a thing of the past. I do however feel that a well designed online business directory is a good place for businesses to advertise. By well designed I mean that if a user searches for a builder in Carlow, the results he/she views will all relate to a builder/builders in Carlow and so on.

Chet Zar

sparky28 wrote: »

I think directories which are simply an online reference for website listings are most definately a thing of the past. I do however feel that a well designed online business directory is a good place for businesses to advertise. By well designed I mean that if a user searches for a builder in Carlow, the results he/she views will all relate to a builder/builders in Carlow and so on.

True, I think though with the rise of new features like Google Places they are becoming less relevant - although still a position for them in the sense that they will drive traffic and improve 'findability' on search engines.

jmcc

sparky28 wrote: »

I think directories which are simply an online reference for website listings are most definately a thing of the past.

As a global solution yes. As a niche solution, no. The niche one is where the expertise of the operator beats the algorithms of Google et al.

I do however feel that a well designed online business directory is a good place for businesses to advertise. By well designed I mean that if a user searches for a builder in Carlow, the results he/she views will all relate to a builder/builders in Carlow and so on.

That disadvantage of niche directories is that some pages will never get any impressions whereas some will get a lot. This makes it necessary to sell run of site advertising.

Regards...jmcc

nikkime

I was looking up online directories tonight and came across this one - online directory ...looks ok - but not finished...other than that yourlocal isnt too bad...

The Apprentice

From a Seo perspective they may hold some value as a low quality link building effort

From a users perspective a complete waste of time..
User > Google Search > Information
User > Google Search > Information 2

Adding to this chain will only confuse, delay, misconstrue

User > Directory > Information
User> Directory> Not Found > Google > Information

Trying to compete with the search engines is a complete waste of time and effort, trying to make a few quid from users from a developers point of view is where i see directories at .. I had dreams and visions of doing something myself but the recent devauluing of directories by google has put the last few nails in the coffin

From a different business model, try adding value or adapting the model with some added value that you may not get in the search engines openly such as ... Some information groomed from the Kompass directory such as latest Ceo, Stock Value, Marketing manager that may not be openly on googlle or something of that nature

Keeping it from google and pertaining the information on just your directory is another can of worms ..
As i said, ive ran away

jmcc

nikkime wrote: »

I was looking up online directories tonight and came across this one - online directory ...looks ok - but not finished

It will take some doing to get that far. Other than that it looks well but directories need content.

Regards...jmcc

TsuDhoNimh

jmcc wrote: »

As a global solution yes. As a niche solution, no. The niche one is where the expertise of the operator beats the algorithms of Google et al.

Perfectly valid and accurate points, but sadly the execution doesn't match the theory.

I can't off hand think of a single niche directory off the top of my head that I'd use ahead of a search engine to find a site. The quality of the directories (as a whole, there are a handful of excellent niche sites that are very well run and moderated that do break the mould [I'm only aware of them through work, so not commonly/widely known]) is just too poor to make it a viable 'first choice' for most users.

Due to the extensive abuse that most directories receive (from people in my profession it must be said, though they are the bottom feeders and not truly in SEO so much as they're in the spam business) it's gotten to the stage that most users would intentionally avoid a directory rather than use one. Hopefully we'll see a modern upsurge in the quality of the directories on offer and some high quality vertical search options come online, but for the moment they're the exception to the rule.

(Slight aside here, but if you're not above making a self serving plug here I would be interested in any of the directory stuff you are/have been working on jmcc if you've any updates to give? They're the type that I'm sure would be at the upper level of those on offer)

tricky D

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

I can't off hand think of a single niche directory off the top of my head that I'd use ahead of a search engine to find a site. The quality of the directories (as a whole, there are a handful of excellent niche sites that are very well run and moderated that do break the mould [I'm only aware of them through work, so not commonly/widely known]) is just too poor to make it a viable 'first choice' for most users.

There's one contender I can think of in this kind of space: http://www.whatclinic.com. However, even they invest heavily in SEO in the geo and industry niches in which they operate. Reflecting your first line above, whatclinic realised at the start that a pure directory would have been dead in the water without decent SEO and accordingly invested huge sums of funding into that. They also have managed to get themselves into the middleman role as part of their monetising strategy which was quite a feat. In its early days, it was appreciated that the role of directories had been in decline due to the strength of search engines which started around 97 by some people's reckoning.

jmcc

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

Perfectly valid and accurate points, but sadly the execution doesn't match the theory.

Not many people have the expertise or the time to put into developing a directory. That's why most are poor clones of Dmoz data with a few of the webdev's own sites added.

Due to the extensive abuse that most directories receive (from people in my profession it must be said, though they are the bottom feeders and not truly in SEO so much as they're in the spam business) it's gotten to the stage that most users would intentionally avoid a directory rather than use one.

The spam from off-topic/out of zone meatbots also causes problems because the average web directory owner might, if they don't know any better, check each of these submissions for inclusion. Most lose interest after a while.

(Slight aside here, but if you're not above making a self serving plug here I would be interested in any of the directory stuff you are/have been working on jmcc if you've any updates to give? They're the type that I'm sure would be at the upper level of those on offer)

Well the search engine in the Waterford Ireland link in my sig is a small beta of a larger Irish search engine that I'm working on. The site count for Waterford alone is about 2000 but again, it is getting the time to add these sites to the main directory that slows things down. I've also built a beta Irish-only search engine. (It isn't completely live but if anyone wants to check it out, pm me.)

I've been working on an automated classification and summarisation algorithm that will classify a site and the key information in the site's text. It is a bit phase of the moon at the moment but it is a definite improvement on word/tag clouds. It might be a while before it is ready though.

Regards...jmcc

TheMan80

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