What is a
directory?
A directory is a
collection of links to other websites usually organized by categories.
People can browse these directories. These are different from a
search engine.
What is a Directory Listing Scam?
Stating false facts
and referencing statistics that are deceiving. You have a right to know
what the truth is before spending money to be listed. Get the facts first.
Often times, webmasters will receive emails asking them to renew their
directory listing when in fact the webmaster never listed with them in the
first place.
How does one determine if it's
a directory scam?
Two useful metrics for determining a websites influence on the
internet are its internet ranking and it's link
popularity.Two useful tools to verify internet rankings are
Alexa.com and Ranking.com.
Alexa.com gives
you access to thousands of user reviews and ratings of web sites, plus
site statistics and related links.
Ranking.com performs market research upon a
statistically, geographically and demographically significant number of
Internet surfers. By recording these surfers' website visits,
Ranking.com calculates the ranking for the top 900,000 most visited
websites.
For determining Link
Popularity the 'Marketleap Link Popularity Tool' reveals the total number of links a search engine has
found for a particular website and breaks down the analysis for 12
different industry categories.
Another tool is
Google's Toolbar (a toolbar is extra software that is added to your web
browser). This toolbar add-on shows Google's own PageRank meter for
each website you visit. The pagerank is a measure used by and developed by
the Google search engine. If a website your
investigating has a pagerank of 0 (zero) then you might want to look
more closely at the website. Google gives a pagerank of 0 (zero) to
websites that use questionable search engine optimization tactics.
However, a PageRank of 0 (zero) does not always mean a penalty.
Sometimes, websites may just be relatively new or may not
have devoted much time to website promotion.
Once you have
researched the questionable website/directory with these sources you
should have a good indication of how much traffic they
get. Sometimes, this is not enough and you have to delve even deeper
to find out the truth. If anything seems suspicious look for feedback
on Alexa.com about the site and other consumer awareness
sites.
