Google Removes Directory Links From Webmaster Guidelines
Oct 3, 2008 at 9:48am ET by Barry Schwartz
Brian Ussery reported that Google has dropped two important bullet points from the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Those bullet points include:
- Have other relevant sites link to yours.
- Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.
At the same time, Google Blogoscoped reported that Google removed the dictionary link in the search results, at the top right of the results page. Related, I am not sure.
I speculated that maybe Google is going to go after more directories in the future. By removing those two bullet points, maybe Google can do this - without seeming all that hypocritical. In addition, I noted a comment from Google John Mueller at a Google Groups thread where he explained the logic behind removing those two points:
I wouldn’t necessarily assume that we’re devaluing Yahoo’s links, I just think it’s not one of the things we really need to recommend. If people think that a directory is going to bring them lots of visitors (I had a visitor from the DMOZ once), then it’s obviously fine to get listed there. It’s not something that people have to do though :-).
As you can imagine, this is causing a bit of a commotion in some of the forums. Some are worried, some are mad, and some are confused by the change.
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