We’ve just launched a new forum here at Directory Critic!

Our new forum is place for webmasters and directory owners to network, ask questions, share information and promote their sites and services.

To kick things off we’re giving away 100 listings in our Webmasters Directory and 100 listings in our WebGuide. For details on how to get your hands on some free listings just check out this thread on the forum.

We’ll also be running more competitions in coming weeks for our new forum members so get involved!

See you there!

This is quick note to all Directory Critic users that I’ll be out of the office from the 20th to the 25th of Sept. Keep submitting your dirs, using the site and reporting dirs and I’ll get everything up-to-date when I get back in.

Thanks for your support

Last night, one of the hard drives on our servers failed. The result was the website going down for about 8-10 hours and some minor data lost. We restored a backup from the 13th of September so only a few days data was lost.

If you submitted your web directory after the 13th of September please resubmit it here:

http://www.directorycritic.com/add.html

If you paid for a listing, or upgraded to a premium listing please add your web directory then contact us. We will verify you made a previous payment and add your directory back to the site.

There might be a few minor glitches over the next 24 hours while we get everything back up 100%. If you find any problems throughout the site please don’t hesitate to contact us and report them.

Thanks for your patience, we’re working hard to get Directory Critic fully operational again!

I’ve been seeing a new trend for about the past 6 months or so. The trend is buying old domains with PR5, throwing up a copy of PHPLD with a free template, calling the directory a “strong PR5″ directory and charging for links. These directories are dead easy to spot, just look for the unusual name coupled with a lack of quality!

I don’t recommend you spend any money at all buying links at these directories. If they accept free listings, go ahead but don’t pay! Generally, the owners of these directories are just out to make a quick buck and will not spend any time or effort on building the traffic and popularity of the directory. We’ll see the evidence at the next PR update, but I am guessing most of these domains will lose some if not all of their PR and incoming links.

I am not saying putting directories on old domains is not a good thing to do, but like with any other directory or website, the owner has to work at it. I still believe there will come a time when a lot of directories will be dropped out of the index and only the unique, well promoted directories with added features for both users and submitters will survive.

So if you’re thinking of starting a directory, be prepared to put in some work. If you look at the top directories, their owners have put many hours into promoting and building a quality site. And the results pay off, becuase webmasters will pay to have their site listed there.

Tonight the number of active and verified webmaster ratings on Directory Critic clocked over 6,000!

Thanks to all the directory owners that send their submitters to rate their directory here. It should pay off in return traffic in the long run!

:)