Dirsensei Web Directory Blog

Well its been quite a while since we have written something on our blog. While revisiting the directory section at Digital Point, I saw some interesting posts from both new and old members but the rest are still the same old crap of link baits and self promotions. The same “Same Ol, Same Ol Crap” in the directory world.

Anyway, I saw some posts there that really got my eye on it. Some web directories have gained sitelinks. Wow !!! Amazing !!! A very big applaud and my heartfelt congratulations to some of these deserving directory owners who have continuously and tirelessly made their sites worth to be on the top echelons of the directory industry.

To start with, what are sitelinks ? Are they Authority Sites or in the league of DMOZ, Joe Ant, Yahoo or Business.com ? These are extra links that are dynamically generated by Google and give them to deserving websites. Not all sites gain sitelinks, and the process of how this is generated is that “I don’t have a hell of an idea”. But what wonders me in frustration is how come some undeserving web directories have gained these sitelinks while some informative and managed sites didn’t gain these so called additional links. What’s behind these “BULL”. There are web directories that are well managed and contents are very informative and I was wondering how on earth that this did not dynamically generate extra links for deserving ones while a few of mediocre directories attained it. I don’t wanna name names as most of these directories deserved it, while some really don’t. Does some of the web directories with site links have editorial integrity ? I don’t think so.

To be continued…..

As we have been out for quite sometime due to personal matters but here we are again and back for more lively and juicy topics. First of all we want to greet everyone a very prosperous New Year ahead. Second we wanted to wish all the Overseas Filipino Communities the best of 2008.

Last article we took was the joke of Philippine Politics and today we would further that topic by taking up some recent events of the country. This topic is about the OMB or the Optical Media Board chaired by Mr. Edu Manzano, a showbiz personality and the host of the popular game show Pilipinas Game Ka Na Ba. Mr. Manzano or Chairman Edu has done wonderful things to the people of the country through his shows and contributions and is contiuously doing so through his works. Mabuhay ka Edu.

Sometime ago there was a rotten exploit by Mr. Chairman of illegal activities concerning the reproduction and sale of pirated discs which he told a senator and a showbiz personality himself Senator Ramon”Bong” Revilla. Unfortunately the said senator has acted ahead of time concerning the raid of a place which did not prosper. The surprising thing is that the senator has media and photographers swarming his Ahead of Time Act. This is such a shame and selfish act coming from a senator of the Philippines so desperately looking for more achievements and “POGI POINTS“. Well, to the dumb and corrupt afficionados of the Philippines it might be nothing but for us here in the US its a showboat. Puros kaplastikan ang pinapakita nitong ating senador na ito. Unfortunately the senate has sided with this SOB in stopping the funds for the OMB.

Well Mr. Bong Revilla, we know that Mr. Manzano is doing his job so let him do it properly. What can we say is the Filipino American community here in Maryland will do its very best to support the people who really helps the country regardless of politics. You have lost the credibility from us. No pogi points for you and we will see to it and in our capacity that we will continuously support the people who helps the Philippines. Tama na ang plastikan and its time for our country to move to a place of respect and development towards the betterment of the Filipino people.

Traditional politicians, lawyers, rich jerk dynasties, actors and actresses, officers of the police and armed forces dominate the political scene. These people comprises the bulk of the political arena that makes the face of the Philippines a laughing stock. To give credit to those whom really performs well, the population knows who’s who. Some are really hard working and true to their intentions to help the country to recover from the endless corrupt system and the path of economic recovery.

What the country needs are fresh vizionalized people that are capable of providing Grade A legislations regardless of party politics. We need people that can stand up and express their views openly without whispers in the ear from corrupt businessmen. We need people who genuinely don’t need the prosperity of the pockets. It may be difficult to find persons like this these days but it is definitely worth the shot. It might be like finding some needles in the haystack but we have to do it. Other countries are moving on and moving on fast and its high time to get even to the rear of the bus seat. Disciplined people are what we need. The congress, senate, government has more than enough high educated entree’s and they are fully camouflaged painted that can eat you in whole once the moon has surfaced in the sky.

Who are the people we need to turn the stakes around for the better ? There are some students, overseas contract workers, housewives, teachers, nurses, local civic leaders. These are in short the common people who’s daily lives are experiencing hardships or making ends meet. We need to hear from them and not from the people who drive SUV’s or expensive cars that have a tinted window shield. Let their voices be heard and jot down their ideas.

to be continued……..

Ever visited your basement’s lately ? How are those fitness machines doing in the basement ? Are they getting rusty or being used regularly ? Many of us or on households throughout the globe have some fitness machines. They maybe a gift from friends or family or bought by ourselves for the purpose of having a healthy and flexible muscle. Some do use it regularly, some occasionally and some when they have the time or when they just thought of it in that instant moment. These are good and healthy recreations in life. Whether they are tread mills, bowplex, abs cruncher or any of those machines in the market today, it makes our muscles work, healthy and be flexible. But what about our faith ? Do we practice it regularly, occasionally or just when we have the time only. If our muscles and health needs physical fitness workout so should our spiritual faith too. Having the time to practice the spiritual needs of our soul is also needed to enhance it, be healthy and make it function or make it as much muscular as it can be . It takes us more closer to God and keep our faith perfectly healthy and spiritually fit. It brings out a good comparison of a healthy body to a healthy spiritual life here on Earth. It does not matter if what church you belong as long as you practice your faith and exercise it more frequently and doing what is best. It is by far the most needed physical fitness that one can have. Some if not most, people have time for recreation, entertainment, or body fitness workouts in life and I guess we should try to do this to ourselves too on our personal spiritual level. We can enhance and flex our faith by visiting our church regularly to get that fitness our spiritual lives needs. Make time as much as possible. Go to your nearest local church or Faith Fitness Center and get that spiritual faith workout needed. Don’t let that get rusty or throw it away just like the machines in your basement. Joining activities at local churches is one of the best Fitness program you can have. It’s FREE and it brings you closer to the Almighty.

The big issue in the US Senate about illegal immigration in the United States have so far produced nothing in results. While most of these bills are pending or scrapped, the wave influx at the US Mexican border still continues to grow daily with hundreds or even thousands of people from South America trying to get a shot for the opportunity to live and work in the United States. Could we blame these people ? I guess so. But who can stop people from going to the Land of Opportunity when the system of its immigration policy is broken and its borders are open. Its an open invitation plain and simple. Unless the US Government reforms its present system and provides strategic plan of strengthening its borders there will be no stop for this exodus.

The Amnesty

There are about 12 million undocumented aliens inside the US and the government is not doing anything about this. The Democrat Senators have been proposing bills to find a solution to the existing problems while the Republican Senators have been killing it again and again. I have to agree that these undocumented people that are already here should be legalized. There can be regulations to regulate their legalization and I can’t see a reason why it can’t be implemented. There are a lot of good proposals from the democratic side but the republicans, especially Mr. Jeff Sessions, is so actively against. Try working at one of the Mcdonalds chain for a month or better at any construction company or landscaping firm and work with them. Find it out for yourself. In some places take the illegal aliens off from work and you’ll see a dead economy in just 1 month.

The Taxes

These illegal aliens work and get their pay checks on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Let us say Juan is working in a fast food chain as a dish washer earning $7.50/hour on an 8 hour shift coming to work daily as given on his schedule. He gets paid on a bi-weekly basis. Let us see his payroll and its deduction. (Note: This is not an accurate payroll it is just meant to show details)

Juans Payroll

Per Hour Rate - $7.50

Hours Worked - 80

Gross Amount - $600

Federal Tax Deduction - $108

State Deduction - $56

Medicare - $9.76

Social Security - $87

Net Income After Deductions - $339.24

Ask yourself where does this taxes go since Juan is an undocumented illegal alien and cannot file a year end Income Tax Return ? Does the IRS Federal, State Taxes and Social Security accounting can’t suddenly use a calculator that an overflow of lets say out of the 12 million illegal aliens, the workforce is 8 million heads multiplied by the figure shown above. Geez !!! Where does that money go.

I guess its time to resolve this immigration issue once and for all. The democrats are continuously finding ways to make an implementation. We hope the US House of Senate could get their butts together and make this working as well as the US Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans should stop party politics for a while and look at some avenues to make this bill working. It will be beneficial for the US economy as a whole.

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog contacted Rand Fishkin a couple of weeks ago about some remaining issues that are happening or ongoing. Their group went to San Marcos and Rand needed a vacation. After that much needed rest and a quality time spent, he immediately replied and sent this to us in a very timely manner. He also made an unbiased review of Dirsensei Web Directory and gave me some hints about editorial integrity that I surely would keep in mind. Thank You Rand and SEOMOZ for that time and I certainly appreciate it.

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog: Thanks for accepting an interview from Dirsensei Web Directory Blog. We hope we could clarify some issues clearly between you and the directory industry but first of all let me ask about your recent trip, Was it for business or about that much needed holiday?

Rand Fishkin: I took off with my fiancèe for Vegas, met up with my grandparents and drove out to Arizona and Utah to see and hike some canyons - it was a terrific time, and a well needed vacation. Next week I’m off to Montrèal to keynote a conference.

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog: To clarify some top issues, when you gave Aviva Directory as an example at your Whiteboard Friday, Why did Aviva came to mind and not some other web directory and what are the search terms that Aviva should rank ?

Rand Fishkin: Aviva’s done a great job of branding themselves and they’ve sent SEOmoz some traffic recently, so I had seen them in our referrals. In terms of specific phrases that Aviva really should be ranking for, I had ID’d a bunch, but here’s a few of them - Go to Avivadirectory, choose something like http://www.avivadirectory.com/Recreation/Motorcycles/ - it’s linked to on the home page. Do some searches:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q…irectory+aviva
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q…ory+racewayatv

Here’s a page that got tons of links - http://www.avivadirectory.com/blogger-law/

Now look at its rankings:
http://www.google.com/search?q=aviva…+needs+to+know

Here’s another one:
http://www.google.com/search?q=aviva+information

and another
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q…ory+blog+aviva

and another
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q…ectories+aviva
(targeting this page - http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories/)

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog: Do you still believe that in spite of the fact that Aviva Web Directory, who has close to a million links and have an authority status, does the search engines has less trust on it ?

Rand Fishkin: Since Aviva was grouped in with many of the 60+ directories who lost rankings, traffic and pages in Google last week, I’d say that absolutely, the search engines have a trust issue with those domains and Aviva specifically.

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog: As an SEO professional who has attended a lot of SEO conferences do you think Aviva should reconsider on doing some more work for its optimization ?

Rand Fishkin: I’m not sure that it’s optimization that’s a problem for them. From what I can see, Jeff has done a great job building a very good site. The problem is how Google, specifically, perceives directories that sell links - and also how they perceive some of the link building tactics Aviva has used to get PR into its own site. I’m not speaking of the social media work, which is terrific, but of some of the other avenues they’ve used for link acquisition.

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog: We go now on another topic which is web directories that floats around and more popping out daily. You know very well that there are some quality directories out there that are worthy for end users or submitters, In your opinion how would you determine a site if its quality or not. Would content be an issue? Do you still think the methodology you choose to judge a quality of a directory is correct? There are lots of directories which are blazing in SERPs for every imaginable keyword and have little content. Are they quality directories? This question is also asked by our dear friend John Rang of Best Internet Resource.

Rand Fishkin: I’d tell John that a directory can be incredibly valuable as a link and as a website. Look at sites like Librarian’s Internet Index, the Salt Lake County Library Resource Links Directory, or the resources directory on Education World . These have a very different feel to them than many of the SEO-targeted, junk directories that you see marketed on Digitalpoint or in other SEO arenas. The quality of the sites they link to, the process for application, the staff who’s considering them, the content on the rest of the site - all of these factor contribute to how they’ll be perceived by the engines.

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog: What’s your opinion about bidding directories and how does Google in your own opinion view this since it is a relatively new phenomenon in the directory market. By checking some listings in a bid directory yourself, does it have useful content or are these primarily aimed at paid links only as any gambling site or a non content site can be included as long as they have the necessary amount to place a bid. Do you think that Google is aware of this?

Rand Fishkin: I actually don’t have much experience with bidding directories, so I’m probably not a good resource to ask about this topic. However, I would say that if you’re considering a purchase on one of them, ask yourself if Matt Cutts, were he to personally visit the site, want to count links from it in the ranking algorithm. If you can solidly answer yes, go for it. If you’ve got reservations, it might not be the best investment.

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog: Matt Cutts says - backlinks from .edu & .gov are treated like any other links from a trusted site by Google. But it seems you and Bob Mutch consider them as having special values . Can you please explain why is it so? Also, Matt and his Google SE team has taken the feed-back on Paid links seriously and there is a major over-haul of Algorithm looming. I guess they will discount the flow of links juice on paid links and they would no longer affect SERPs. As most SEOs rely on those type of links - do you think this would affect the majority of the SEO community? Question by John Rang.

Rand Fishkin: I would say that almost without exception, links from .edu and .gov sites provide more value than most other links. The problem is that folks assume it’s “because” they’re on .edu and .gov domains - that’s not why Bob and myself recommend them. Rather, it’s because nearly every .edu and .gov domain is well-trusted, well-ranked and provides good link value. The same can’t be said of any other commercially available domain extensions.

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog: Why is SEOMOZ’s quality directory list private? If it is public-then other directory owners could look up to them and try to improve their own directories. This would in turn help everyone in a broader perspective. Also, are there any improvements for SEOMOZ Page Strength Tool now or in the future ?

Rand Fishkin: The link directory is one of the services that we felt added a lot of value to premium content. I agree that if it were out in the open, it might have more of a community benefit - we’ll certainly consider that going forward. As for Page Strength - we made a recent upgrade about 35 days ago, and reports coming through now have an average accuracy of above 80% - while that’s not great, and we’re always trying to get better, it’s a good step up from the 60% accuracies we were seeing back in June & July. We’ve recently made an investment in more hardware and data-capture abilities, and we’ll probably have another large upgrade sometime in October or November that I hope will bring us close to 95% accuracy.

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog: There are sites I will pick randomly from Aviva’s Strongest Directory List. Would you take the time to review each one and give yuor view on them ? In just a few words or a sentence. Sorry for the long list but I asked for 25 originally and limited it to 20.

Rand Fishkin: Sadly, I don’t have the time to go through these, but I will check out DirSensei.

My first take is that the design is spiffy - I’m a fan of the samurai theme Checking out the new links page, the sites that have been added recently certainly look to be of very high quality, with the possible exception of something like the Peak Level Directory (which looks at first glance like it might be a bit fishy, but I didn’t dig deep, so that’s just a gut feeling).

I checked out a few of the categories linked-to on the home page like relationships - I found this site - active relationships - linked to from that page, and that got me a little concerned, because it looks like pure spam. One of the big ways that engines devalue and penalize directories is by looking at who they link to, and if this site is an indication of other bad stuff that might be in the directory, I’d be a bit worried.

The last thing I’ll check is some rankings - searches like this, this and this make me think that Google is giving a healthy amount of respect to the directory. I don’t think there’s any penalty on it as of right now.

It has been the 3rd day now since all this fuzz started of some called A Glitch, while others called it A Penalty but whatever it is Google sure did clean house recently most of it coming from the directory industry and the long thread of battles at Digital Point.
Why ?

Exactly no one knows for sure at the moment as even the speaker for Google, Matt Cutts have not announced anything specific. All are speculations and assumptions right at the moment.

Is it Good or Bad ?

For the whole industry honestly it is a bad thing that is going on. There are sites that got affected which are good ones but there are no remorse for the bad apples that rot the whole industry. A perfect example for this is a PR6 Directory that has a bulging 5000 categories and sub categories that has no listings. It is primarily aimed at gaining strength without offering anything just passing Page Rank. A proclaimed Family Friendly with Gambling Links, Human Edited with 80% of the links as poor sites without valid constraints. So what does it offer actually ? Nothing in particular and it is intended to just rank and be beautiful to the eyes of webmasters not the end users.

You can argue with me anytime but its not really in the web directory definition. Then follows the rest of the other directories that boast of the same thing. Pathetic indeed and imagine these people spends most of the time in forums arguing or spamming to get the attention for their submission.

Spamming Thread No.1

Spamming Thread No.2

Now tell me if they don’t openly target buy/selling links in that thread. And if they get hit with a club they cry FOUL. Isn’t that the most moronic idea of the century ? Now call me one SOB if you can as that thread is just lame and the people involve in there are just hooking up their own herpes.

Looking For Faith

Faith is a Very Good Thing I believe in that personally. How would faith help you if you don’t even help yourself or help yourself with the deception again and again. Manipulating the SERPS and Site Indexing, Buying Links in High PR Irrelevant Sites, Outsmarting Google with their techniques and on and on. Don’t go overboard and get ahead of the pack while kicking the people around you “BULLIES”.

Spamming and More Spamming

This would never stop and they will look for ways and find to deceive the search engines again. Then they would cry, lament and shout that justice was not there. Openly they would say that they don’t sell links. Dude even a truckload of Holy Water would have no effect if you keep saying that.

Bidding Directories - Whatever they say in my book that is Gambling pure and simple.

So Where Are These Sites That Have Been Bombed By Google ?

Alive Web Directory - Former Authority Website

Uncover The Net - Former Authority Website

Aviva Web Directory

Directory Dumps

eWebPages Web Directory

Dirspace Directory

MingleOn Web Directory

FreeWebIndex

Big Web Links

Links Factory

Eonte Web Directory

Forplex Business Directory

Elegant Directory

Biz-Dir Business Directory

There are more which I have not yet looked at. Meanwhile these directories are not ranking for their own names and will look for more. Its only day 3 but we have yet to see what is there to happen in the coming days.

The Japanese are taking over again the market and this time its Warp Speed for the Internet.

Americans may have invented the internet but the Japanese are running away with the technology according to a Foreign Service Post I have read. Broadband Services in Japan is 8 to 30 times faster than in the US and most of all offer cheaper rates. Imagine that. Broadband speed acceleration in Japan, South Korea, other parts of Asia and much of Europe is pushing its technology to the next level to innovations that are likely to remain closed for some years in the United States. (monopoly and politics I guess)

The speed allows the Japanese to watch broadcast quality, full screen high definition television programs over the internet while mocking the low quality images the American firms offer. With its ultra high speed applications being rolled out, for teleconferencing on medical fields which allows urban doctors to diagnose disease from a distance or telecommuting in distances, by 2010 Japan can meet its goal for most professional people to work at home.

Why ? Japan has made it possible to manage and have a good relationship with the government in terms of regulations while the US is pumping it out at Capitol Hill. The facts are the copper wires in Japan are newer and has shorter loops. Competition among phone companies have been awarded a tax break and most launched a nationwide build out campaign of new wires making the lower capacity wires obsolete. Nippon Telegraph and Telecommunication (NTT) now offers speeds of fiber optic 17 times as fast from a cable company in the US and the ratio are about 8.8 million homes have this fiber optic lines installed that is roughly 9 times the number comparable in US homes.

Japan also has tested a telepathology system and will be implemented next spring. This allows pathologists to use remote controlled microscopes using high definition conferencing to examine tissue samples from hospital patients in rural areas without access to major hospitals. They only need a clinic with the right microscope and a phone line with fiber optic connection. (Wow !! What a development)

Google’s vice president Vinton G. Serf, has said that sometimes regulatory commission has to have a strong federal regulatory framework to ensure a competitive framework happens in a constructive way. There are many laws pending at Capitol Hill and legislators need to speed up some of it in order to catch up.

Here are facts provided by ITU and WTI Database in 2006:

Broadband Subscribers in Industrialized Nations:

(per 100 inhabitants)

South Korea - 24.9

Canada - 17.6

Switzerland - 17.0

Sweden - 15.1

Norway - 15.0

Israel - 14.3

Japan - 14.1

Finland - 12.8

US - 11.4

France - 11.2

Britain - 10.3

Monthly Rates in Japan for fiber optic connections are often lower than that for slower connections in the US; Price and download speed in megabits per second.

Japan

Fiber Optic - $ 36.58/100 mbps by NTT

Fiber Optic - $ 39.22/100 mbps by Yahoo

Cable - $98.20/30 mbps by J-Com

————————————————

Washington DC

Fiber Optic - $39.9/ 5 mbps by Verizon

DSL - $29.99/ 3 mbps by Verizon

Cable - $52.95/8 mbps by Comcast

Cable - $41.99/ 5 mbps by Cox

In Japan the the regulatory wars are far from over. Speed is always a valuable asset for companies offering communication services. The US has to be more watchful of this or they might lose the market share.

While we have stayed for 15 years in Japan, a lot of things learned from there besides the culture, tradition and language, the part that we barely missed is Japanese Gardening. Although we went to so many temples and shrines, we mostly ignored the scenic beauties of Japanese Gardens. It is only now that our appreciation has sent us to the Home Depot and Lowes Stores to buy some needed stones and other gardening goods. We are restructuring our lawn to make it lovelier and have that Japanese touch of elegance. What made us do this is when we visited a long time friend in New Jersey, we saw their garden so elegant that me and my wife were so amazed and could only say that we want this too. As soon as we came back I contacted one of the landscaping companies in our area, who also is a family friend and talked some modifications for our garden. We are now in the planning stages and hopefully we could modify the structuring according to some photos we have gathered.

So it will take a while for planning this project but we do hope by next summer we could enjoy a cool Japanese Garden. Though its late already to start the modifications right now we bought some things already like some stones and seeds for the start of spring next year.

We have been following this Rand Fishkin and his SEOMOZ blog. More lies and more self publicity. His attacks on web directories especially Aviva has brought a popular debate on the internet and somewhat a war between SEO’s and Web Directory Owners. His latest publications of lies, deceit, self promotion ala Howard Stern and published at Smackdown Blog of Michael Vandemar had me puking. This Circus Clown Rand Fishkin is so great at making up excuses after excuses and would not stop. Just a simple “I am very sorry to Aviva Web Directory Owner” or an “I apologize to the Directory Industry” for creating this whole mess would be ok. But no he wants to create MORE popularity for himself and plays it like Howard Stern to go BIGTIME. A smart move that only a manipulative Street Mart Vendor in Asia can do this.

Here are his latest….by Rand Fishkin

So many points to try to address in this post, but I’ll do my best.

1) You are totally correct that I wrote a post marketing our list of directories addition to the premium content, but I’m not sure what’s wrong with that. I wasn’t attacking directories to make people sign up for membership - I was doing it because all our testing and link building over the past few years has been showing me that there really is a very, very tiny amount of value in general directory link building.

Give it a try! Go to a list like StrongestDirectories.com and buy links at all of those low-mid range general directories that market in people’s signatures at Digitalpoint and V7N. Make it for a moderately competitive market like “hvac training school” or similar. Let me know if buying all those directory links gets you any ranking - my experience has been that it just doesn’t provide good ranks, but if your experience is different and you want to champion the value of those general directories, I’d love to see some examples and would be happy to blog about the value if you can show it.

2) Is rankings a fair way to value links for rankings? In my opinion it is. We disagree on that, and that’s OK - John Scott, who’s a very smart SEO, and many other folks disagree as well. There are plenty of people on both sides of this issue, but my experience puts me heavily on the “good rankings = generally high value from links.” Poor rankings for many unique terms in a title tag and on a page can also often spell a penalty or dampening of some type. For directories, this has always set off red flags to me that Google doesn’t trust them because they’re linking out to some shady sites.

3) Is it inaccurate to say that directory owners got upset with us? I’m pretty sure they did… Was there a lot of comment from non-directory owners in those threads? If so, I do apologize for my generalization - I just saw a bunch of links to directories in the signatures of the criticizing members.

4) Honestly there’s not a lot of “spin” going on. These are just topics that were on my mind. In fact, believe it or not, I had no idea that Jane was making a follow-up post on the subject. She’s had her own criticism aimed at some of her private projects on sites like Digg, so I think it was an issue close to her heart. In either case, I can say honestly that there’s no intention to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes - they were just subjects that were interesting to us (independently).

5) RealEstateWebmasters from 3.5 years ago - yeah, that was a total wrong-headed move. I think it was actually the start of my decision to go white hat. I hated the idea that I was hiding something and overall, I think it made me a better SEO. I do still apologize to anyone who was part of that (I think we got 3-4 links out of that and I tried to personally address all of those folks). After a couple months and some apologies, REWebmasters let me back in, which was very nice of them.

6) SOCEngine - you’re totally right on this. I think it provides no value - it’s a general directory with almost no value. I’ll ask the crew to shut it down - it has been barely operating the last couple years. We’ll just keep it in existence but kill the submissions so anyone who is listed now will continue to be listed.

As you’ll note, I haven’t promoted it at all in 3 years. It’s certainly not an income source for us in any meaningful way.

7) The personal attack seems very, very harsh here. I think the message is “don’t trust Rand or SEOmoz - they’re trying to pull a fast one on the SEO world.” I work really, really hard to try to do just the opposite, so obviously, I’m heartbroken to see this kind of post. I guess we can always work harder, though, and I’ll try to do that when I return from vacation.

In the meantime, please do consider responding to my email.

Best,
Rand

Sure Rand whatever Floats your Boat. But attacking web directories and not looking at your face if there are dirt in it and could look at others dirt is a prime example of HYPOCRISY at its BEST.