Directories Articles by SEO Speedwagon

July 30, 2007

Business.com Appreciates (Because of) Your Support

One of the big stories last week was the sale of Business.com to RH Donnelly. Because the business.com domain has been one of the rock stars of domain buying & selling, I found a few other numbers you might find interesting. Following are a few of the years that business.com changed hands, as well as the price:

• 1997: $150,000
• 1999: $7,500,000
• 2007: $345,000,000

I remember the sale in 1999, and how many believed its record-setting price epitomized what Alan Greenspan called "irrational exuberance." But what I didn't remember is that the 1997 sale also set a record, at least according the article I cite above.

In terms of raw numbers, $345 million is quite a haul. But note that statistically, the domain had significantly better annual appreciation between '97 and '99 (2450%) than it did between '99 and '07 (563%).

Today, of course, business.com is more than just a domain name. I'll be very interested to see what Donnelly does with it and whether -- or how quickly -- it can recoup its investment.

Business.com Appreciates (Because of) Your Support
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December 14, 2006

Direct Links from the Yahoo Directory?

The Yahoo Directory has always shown direct links to the robots. It appears, temporarily anyway, that they are showing them to us, as well . . . in the Directory Listing, anyway, not the Directory Search Results.

Direct Links from the Yahoo Directory?
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December 01, 2006

Here Lies ODP

It doesn't really seem like humans are doing it better over at dmoz. For more than a month now, any attempt to submit a url to the Open Directory Project leads to nowhere.

Check out the frustration from those who have not yet given up on ODP.

Here Lies ODP
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July 20, 2006

How About One More Solid, Danny Sullivan?

As we recently celebrated the liberation of the results page from ODP oppression, I couldn't help but think of a lesser-publicized instance of serp injustice.

It's the same ole story. Site owner forks out $300 and puts together a spotless title, description, and category recommendation for the Yahoo Directory submission. A week later, the site is accepted, but a few changes to the submission are apparent, namely the title, description, and category recommendation. Oh Well, right? The site is in the best directory there is. That's good enough. Site owner thinks, "Sometimes you just gotta say 'What the F@$%!"

Then site owner notices this Yahoo Directory title, which is simply his url, now occupies the spot formerly held by his most glamorous Yahoo result. Site owner thinks of the difference in clickability, and it is that, more than anything, that leads to his drinking problem.

Repeated requests for an update receive as much attention as a new Chevy Chase movie, and that's when site owner remembers that he paid $300 for this treatment! At that point, site owner goes to the window, opens it and sticks his head out and yells, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

So Danny Sullivan, please do us one more solid. Be mad as hell with us. Champion NoYahoo as you did NOODP, cause, uh, no-one's gonna really be free until serp persecution ends.

How About One More Solid, Danny Sullivan?
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July 18, 2006

NOODP = Yes!!!

I have no musical reference to my post this week other than to say that I find the instrumental gem called YYZ on Rush’s finest album, Moving Pictures, to be the perfect music to write a blog post to. I highly recommend it. And Neil Peart, I know you're reading this ..... you are the finest drummer on our planet.

Last Thursday, our fair-haired and highly regarded Erik Dafforn sent the Intrapromote staff an email with a Subject line that all IPers (Intrapromote staff) assumed was a bad joke.

The subject line you ask?

“Google now honors NOODP meta tag!�

This would mean that our clients could include a tag on their web pages to tell Google not to pull the often ho hum titles from ODP and use them as the title in search results pages.

“Yeah right�, was simultaneously (I like to think, harmoniously) uttered in our Ohio, Indiana, and Oregon offices as the email appeared in our collective In boxes. However, much to our surprise it is actually true!

Did Google finally get tired of people asking for this or did they quickly follow suit because MSN recently added support for the NOODP tag? Did Danny Sullivan finally get through to Google? Who knows, but my money is on keeping up with the competition.

It was good timing for me since one of the clients I work with needed to shake loose from a Google SERP that listed only their company name as the title. Clickability score? About a 2 out of 10.

If you’re in the same boat of folks disgusted by your ODP title and description and how it shows up upon searches at Google, simply add the following code to the source code of your page:

< META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP" >

NOODP = Yes!!!
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March 09, 2006

If the Brady Bunch Were a Links Page . . .

Sha na na na na na na na na, Sha na na na na.

If the Brady Bunch were a links page, how would you know the Bradys had jumped the shark?

It is necessary for Link Building to be about as time consuming (and exciting) as trying to set the teeter-totter record. After all, you cannot judge a room by its beaded entrance. You have to check out each site, but if you are going to be efficient, you must train your eyes to easily catch the least groovy characteristics of a links page and move on.

So here are some Link Building thoughts inspired by the one day when the lady met this fellow.

• Don't waste time looking for Tiger if you go to his site and get a 404. Just find a new dog.

• If Greg invites you to his room but takes you to his dad's den, assume the worst. A redirected links page is a bad sign!

• Vacations bring bad luck. If you see links to travel sites (and you are not in the travel industry) avoid it like the Brady Tiki.

• Just one Cousin Oliver link can kill. A page linking to a gambling, payday loan, or adult site bears the kiss of death.

• If a site looks like it took a football to the nose, assume it is not being updated or damaged goods, at best.

• A Marcia Marcia Marcia links page has the same keywords repeated too often and is considered Spam Spam Spam.

• Like a bathroom occupied by 6 kids, you never get your due and proper on a page with too many links. Just go somewhere else.

• It looks like somebody stole the playbook when you start to see the same links section duplicated on many different sites. Don't get involved, unless of course it was DMOZ's playbook.

• If you cannot easily find a site's contact information, consider him George Glass.

• Paying someone to date your sister is wrong, unless that person is Yahoo or an established, relevant directory offering link text.

You see kids, a gift is only a good thing when the giver has given thought to that gift. But when the gift the giver gives gives grief, then that gift should give the givee regrets.

If the Brady Bunch Were a Links Page . . .
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November 01, 2005

DMOZ: Hard to Get Into, Harder to Escape

So you think it's hard to get your site into the Open Directory Project (DMOZ)? Try getting it OUT.

ABAKUS Internet Marketing Blog posted this morning about one man's efforts to have his site removed from DMOZ.

As I've written about before, Google sometimes experiments with its user interface by pulling title and description data from a site's entry in DMOZ. Site owners themselves frequently dislike this phenomenon, because it gives them little or no control over how sites appear on a Google results page. The case found by ABAKUS is no different. In the Resource Zone thread it cites, a site owner asks for removal from the directory because

• Google is pulling his DMOZ data for its results pages, and
  
• That data, apparently created by a DMOZ editor, was a poor (if not inaccurate) description of his site, and he claims it was causing him to lose business.

If you follow these topics closely, this thread is a classic - a perfect illustration of why site owners and DMOZ editors have few positive words for each other. While the situation seemed to resolve itself rather peacefully, the original question - why, upon request of a site owner, a site cannot (or will not) be removed from DMOZ - is never really answered, other than it's simply not their policy.

DMOZ: Hard to Get Into, Harder to Escape
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