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!

:)

To be honest, when I submit my link to most web directories I don’t expect to get any traffic at all back. I use web directories for links, not traffic, that’s it. The only directory I expect to get an decent traffic from is Yahoo! Directory. But when I was going through my stats for all my smaller sites this morning I noticed I was getting traffic from a number of directories I submitted to. So I thought I’d make a list of the directories that sent me traffic.

The amount of traffic sent by each directory varied site to site. Generally speaking, only 1 or 2 free directories sent me traffic the rest were paid placements. So, here’s the list of directories that sent me traffic:

1. Aviva Directory (send on a few sites too)
2. King Bloom
3. Best Of The Web (my 2 month free sponsor sent quite a few, as did regular listings)
4. Yahoo! (easily send the most traffic - but it’s the most expensive)
5. Directory Panel
6. Links Juice
7. DirSpace
8. Ezilon
9. Joe Ant
10. y7n Directory
11. Romow

There were a lot of other directories that did send traffic, but it was only about 1-2 visitors a month which does make the list!

If you look at the above list you’ll see a very obvious trend…they are all quality, well managed directories. Which means not only do they send a bit of traffic, but your link is actually worth something when you submit it.

If you ask me, directory link building is definately not dead. I have just become a lot more selective about the site(s) I submit my site to. My old methods were to grab every link I could get, but that’s definately changed - especially with my larger sites.

It’s easy to see who puts time, effort and money into making a solid directory. These are the directories that you want your site listed in. And for the directory owners, the time, effort and money should pay off

It’s good to see so many quality free PHPLD templates that are now available! The first free PHPLD templates made available were pretty basic, but now more designers are getting involved and the quality is keeps getting better.

I’ve noticed that the free PHPLD templates section of this site is getting more pageviews and downloads over the last month. There are now 53 free templates available and almost 2,000 downloads!

Here are some of my personal favorites from the collection:

SlyGreen - by Linksjuice
Glossary Orange - by My Green Corner
Coolwave - by PHPLD.us
Explore - by PHPLD.us
Link Gear - by Emille
Cyclone - by PHPLDTemplates.com
Alive 3.2 - by Directory Mix
SwirlMix - by All PHPLD

If you’re a designer and offer free templates, apply to have them listed here on DC. You’ll get some extra exposure and more downloads of your template.