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Google Removes Directory Links From Webmaster Guidelines

Barry Schwartz on October 3, 2008 at 9:48 am

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.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.