Dirsensei Web Directory Blog

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.

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.

Last week we were looking around our community and saw quite a number of houses for sale. Most of our neighbors have either relocated to another state with some of them went as far as going overseas. Land prices has really declined making it hard to sell your house on your terms right now. We have talked to many of the homeowners and most are dis satisfied with their piece of investment. It seems that they bought it and the price depreciated a lot. So we went ahead and see whats going on and viewed some of the properties for sale and we were surprised that they are selling it for less than the amount of what they purchased making it a total loss. I understand that there are many expenses incurred but it seems that one must be ready before jumping to a purchase since no one knows exactly how every business goes up and down from time to time. It is the same concept though that each must be ready for that rainy season ahead. Anticipation alone is not the brightest of the brightest idea. A very well executed plan at the same time some financial savings could be the best especially during these time of land depreciation you can hold on till the prices gets to a more favorable one.

A look around the neighborhood most of the eye catching property that sold quickly are the mobile homes. Especially fitted for small families and low budget, these are the most bought properties right now since savings is imminent. We looked for a couple mobile homes and we were impressed on their value and at the same time the interiors and land location. The community tenants are so friendly and amenities are of quality. I think this would be the proper investment right now for small families and small budgeted individuals. We are looking also to purchase one and might decide to rent our home. We like it a lot.

Global Internet Index is a Search Engine Friendly web directory which has around 2500 sub categories to list quality websites. This web directory has listed all the top authority websites as of now and has no 3rd party advertising.

The main aim of this directory is to be a powerful medium to list websites and give the users the best results. The directories has articles on every page which is going to boost up the ranking of the websites listed there as they will be listed on content pages like health and seo information.

The directory staff review your website and get it listed under regular or featured listing in the most relevant category. If there is no category they will create a new sub category which is relevant to your website and list it promptly.

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