So there have been an arse ton of new directories to hit the market.

I think listing sites in many of these will surely improve your Yahoo! and MSN search relevancy scores (or at least my own experiences have shown that), but I do not think many of them carry anywhere near as much weight with Google.

IMHO a disturbing pattern is emerging where the same directory owners own 2 or more directories which are easily identifiable as being related - especially since even many of the related directories have built significant portions of their link popularity from the same sources - and often even the same pages (while also registered under the same WhoIs information). Algorithms such as Hilltop mean the second "related" directory listing probobably counts for next to nothing in terms of its effects on Google's search relevancy.

The multi directory approach makes it far easier to make one of the directories a throw away...which makes the second similar directory do little to ensure added value over the first. If the registration data is the same for two directories and you do not expect them to drive much direct traffic then it might be worth just paying for listing in whichever one of the directories you think is going to be the main directory.

Lots of hate threads seem to be appearing about various directories (BlueFind, WebAtlas, and now RubberStamped)...often from other directory owners or close friends of other directory owners as well. Some people who run directories are also creating directory rating sites which are obviously going to be inherently biased.

When it comes down to it I do not think that search engines will need to do a ton of work to offset the effects various directories may have on search relevancy. The directory space is becoming hyper competitive (and thus likely providing diminishing returns for many directory owners) and many directories are making errors which will hurt themselves....sitewide payday loan links and top level penis pill listed sites do nothing to build brand or useful citation data.

If the search engines decide that data adds no value to their algorithm there is nothing that will force them to use it (as seen by what happened to SearchKing).

I have been trying my best to keep up with many of the directories, but eventually its going to be pretty darn hard to do. As the search algorithms continue to advance and new directories appear at an advancing rate I will probably have to look at other ways to keep up with new directories or abandondon the idea...at least in its current format.

I am starting to get the feeling that much of my time would be better spent learning and creating better ideas which effectively sell themselves, but for now I am still doing lots of submissions...

I am currently reading Blink and find it to be an interesting book thusfar. :)

MSN Search Out of Beta:
Some people are seeing it flip back and forth, but I have been seeing the Beta results at the main site.

AOL to Join the Fray:
John Battelle writes about how AOL is building bolt on search products. Were the walls up too long? Is it too little to late?

How Much Can You Automate:
Jason Duke starts off what will probably amount to a fairly interesting automation thread at ThreadWatch.

Protecting Your Listings:
Many companies and people make a name for themselves but do not adequately protect their own name or site name in the search results.

No matter how powerful your name is if you do not create multiple sites with good inbound linkage data you will likely end up with sites or pages that help destroy your brand listing near the top of search results.

Apparently Search Engine Roundtable has a client experiencing these problems.
Anyone Can Cause Major Effects:
The beauty of the guerilla warfare in-the-search-results marketing ideas are:

• if you can get your dissent seen others will likely have the same experiences.

• You can easily encourage others to make similar sites (or create content on your site) and target other similar words.
• Using a couple days and a couple hundred dollars you can create a site which ends up costing some company hundreds of thousands of dollars to dislodge.

Make Your Corporate Dissent Stick Out:

• build a viral linking campaign into your site

• search for other dissenters and contact them. encourage linkage.
• place BlogAds and other similar advertisements on sites which are owned by vocal people who you know will be outraged by and spread the topic of your site.
• leave comments and trackbacks on blogs which heavily support the company you dislike. if they care enough they may rant about you and give you additional linkage data.
• publish using a blogging system and integrate your site into the blog community by making lots of comments on related blog posts and registering your site at many of the blog directories.
• publishing your content as a blog also can allow others to quickly create you content for you while they are thinking about that topic.
• always remind people to "link to us"
• make sure that even if their name is not in your domain name (which you may not want it to be for legal reasons - check the laws where you live!!!) that it looks as though part of your official name contains the name of the company you do not like. this helps to encourage linkage data which overlaps with their name.
• use fact and research on your site...if it is just a rant site it will not be as effective. people are more moved by emotion than by just numbers though. combine those facts with displaying raw human emotional pain and suffering for maximum effect. (get pictures and stories on your site. Pretend that you are Michael Moore and you are in Flint Michigan).
• get listed at many directories under categories such as Allegedly Unethical Firms. if it is a single complaint then list in the single complaint category.
• if you can convince enough other people to also make sites on the same topic then that company can get their own DMOZ category which may rank well based upon the power of the DMOZ directory.
• make your site as SEO friendly as possible. If you have a site which is taking a major corporation to task feel free to email me and I will see if I can give you a free copy of my ebook.

Effective Anti-Corporate Marketing:
If it is readily apparent that you are biased or if you insult the intelligence of the readers odds are that the site will not have a ton of effect on consumers. If you are just trying to annoy the corporation then it may worth it to make the copy extra spicey, of course check your local laws and whatnot :)

Corporate Responses:
Companies may want to sue you, but then again they will probably not want to throw media weight / plublicity toward your site. Odds are that they will need to invest money into making many unique corporate sites and building the link popularity for them.

As they build sites they have to build up all of them or leverage their link popularity well to avoid your site from showing up.

Earlier there was speculation Google was going to announce a link NoFollow tag, but as it turns out a whole ton of people got together and also backed the idea.
Players in the new NoFollow tag:

• Google

• Yahoo! Search
• MSN Search
• Six Apart - makers of TypePad & MovableType, who also recently bought LiveJournal
  • Six Apart Guide to Comment Spam

  • Six Apart Professional Network
  • MT Plugin
• Scripting News
• WordPress
• Flickr
• Buzznet
• blojsom
• Blosxom

Ask Jeeves / Teoma was the only major global search engine which did not immediately endorse the tag. Since they look at link clusters blog spamming does not affect them the same way as it does most other search algorithms. bBlog was not on the list, but my friend Eaden said that he too will follow the tag.

Is the NoFollow tag just for blogs?
The change is not a blog only change, but is a change which can be used on any site. If someone else is placing a link to your site or if you are linking to something shifty as an example of something shifty then that would be a good time to use the NoFollow tag.

What the NoFollow tag looks like:
Instead of linking to a site with
<a href="http://www.site.com">Site</a>
the link would now look like
<a href="http://www.site.com" rel="nofollow" >Site</a>

More Info on the NoFollow Tag:
Danny Sullivan has a long post about the nofollow tag explaining lots of the logic behind the new tag and how it will effect webmasters.

How will the NoFollow Tag Effect the Web?

• Many bloggers have amazing link popularity due in part to comments they left on other blogs. This will cause lots of blogs which were primarily connected by comments to lose a good bit of their link popularity.

• Many automated blog spam scripts may work harder to find the blogs which are slow to change. While the number of spamable blogs will go down the value of effective blog spamming will go up.
• Bloggers will have a big riot celebrating this move. After time passes they will still get spammed and realize that this will not immediately cure the problem.
• More bloggers will get approached with a bit of $$$ for writing editorials. More bloggers will sell out.
• NickW is posting everywhere about how he does not like the change, which should be a good way for him to build some link popularity, as bloggers near and dear to comment spam are already linking to him ;)
• Some people who were posting useful and thoughtful comments in part to gain link popularity may post less often.
• Some worry that people will abuse this tag for SEO purposes, but those who would do that could just as easily use other redirects, so I really do not see any change there.
  
• This change does make the role of link popularity (and how to keep it) much more visible. The "keep your link popularity" line of thinking may kill off a ton of natural linking, which in the end really does not help anyone.

• SEOs might rush off to make their own blogs. Certainly the editorial side can be handled on the cheap
• When low hanging fruit is removed from competitive marketing environments other opportunities and techniques also arise. Some people from WMW believe content stealing will become far more common. WMW is the only forum I have seen with significant coverage of the new NoFollow tag with threads here and here

Blog comments sure did make it easy for Joe random schmuck (like me) to rank good about a year ago but the low hanging fruit does not last forever. About 10 - 12 months ago I had a personal blog up to a PR7 with no link buying or renting. Last super bowl Google was even ranking that site high for Janet Jackson... As time passes and the web develops more and more low hanging fruit disappears. As search engines make their moves some will be reactive and some will almost always be one step ahead.

I have been getting links for a few friends recently and have noticed some pretty solid links pointing at some pretty shoddy / worthless SEO services (such as free automated Search Engine Submission services).

Many of these links are from well themed .edu pages that have not been updated for years. Some of these less than stellar services are being clustered with the like of authoritative search sites such as SearchEngineWatch and major search engines.

A few options:

1. Write more compelling posts which hopefully naturally gain more links.

2. Edit my content a bit better and stop using words like "fuck" so that more links come naturally.
3. Make more friends. Friends don't let friends go unlinked.
4. Contact some of the .edu sites and remind them that submission services are past their time and remind them that they can get current info for free by reading my ebook if they would like a copy.
5. Sponsor or donate to other sites.
6. Test a blog spamming script <-- joking as that would suck when people tested them back and that would be like 1,000,000 negative karma points ;)
7. Create some free cool tools to help build natural linkage data...of course many of these tools would likely need to infringe on various search engines TOS, and thus could get my site banned from search results.
8. Write lots of press releases until one sticks. :)
9. Make a rant post on my blog about these links. This would be a complete waste unless it also brought on other ideas of value.
10. Create and market my own useless white label meta search service or start a directory. Require linkage for inclusion.
11. Ask other bloggers (where is NickW) to link to this post using "free search engine submission" as the link text. Google Bombs rock!!!
12. Create a white label anonymously registered automated free search engine submission service which requires and checks for a link back to that site before "submitting" the other sites. Advertise that site on AdWords heavily until it picks up linkage data and then advertise this site on that one.

While this post will probably not be enlightening for most people reading this blog it is a reminder to those new to SEO that there are many many ways to skin a cat, or a dog, or a fish, etc.