There is an ancient saying that even honey taken in large quantities is poison. What this means is that however good something could be, if done at inappropriate levels can be harmful. Probably directories have met that fate. Even a couple of years earlier, the number of directories were fewer and were of a much higher quality. This was a win-win situation for all. Users found useful information and links to websites via these directories while webmasters made good profit from these. And then the gold rush started. Suddenly you had every person on the internet having a directory of his own. This resulted in quality taking a backseat. And directories, for a lot of people, have started dying a slow death. Not that there are not enough good directories around which still provide value for their users.

A good directory does not need to have a large number of listings and compete with DMOZ and Yahoo! This was a common mistake done by most webmasters. This lead to directories having a large number of irrelevant and useless entries leading to a loss of faith in the directory by its users. Directories like web-dir.com do not have thousands of listings under each category but still provide value to visitors.

Another thing a directory worth its name should concentrate in doing is to ensure that a paid listing does not mean compromise in quality. Having someone pay for a link does not mean that you have to sell your soul to him. We do feel strongly about this because finally the aim should be for a ‘real human’ to use your directory to find some useful information. Having a paid submission option usually reduces the number of SPAM listings. This is one of the reasons while Yahoo! or Web-Dir do not have too many low quality listings on their directory.

Directories are fast losing their importance not because Google does not want webmasters selling links but more because they are not being useful to ‘real people’. And the solution lies with the directories themselves. They have to evolve to rid themselves of useless listings and provide value to both their visitors and to their advertisers. Otherwise the day not be far off when directories are spoken off in the same breath as linkfarms.