Link Directory Genocide - Link directories are obsolete
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First, we have better search technology. Link directories were originally formulated online in order to give people a better way of finding what they needed on the web. But given that the technology of search algorithms has greatly improved, and is still improving nearly daily, it is no small thing that the directory would become one of the casualties of better search engines.
Second, people are far better at surfing the web than they used to be. Web users are more educated about the usefulness of the internet search engine, and most people with internet access use them. People who said they would never use the internet are now not only emailing their grandchildren in Nova Scotia, but are participating in discussion boards and chat rooms and playing Mah Jongg online; it is those same people that have found the usefulness of search engines delivering exactly what they need to find.
Third, it is getting easier for people to find what they need online through a search engine, because dial up connections are the fastest they’ve ever been, and with more and more people moving to broadband internet, people get to spend more time searching and less time waiting.
Perhaps you are following me up to this point and can see where my logic comes from; perhaps you can even understand that the link directory is fading away as a natural result of not being necessary anymore. So why am I calling it “Link Directory Genocide” if it seems to just be dying of natural causes?
While genocide is technically “the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group,” I apply it to the link directory loosely because, well, it is being euthanized, so to speak. I certainly do not wish to offend anyone, so bear with me during my analogy.
In the last Google update, many link directories got hit hard; hard enough where any traffic was essentially…well, killed off. In fact, it is my strong belief that Google terminated many of these non-essential directories in the SERPs with the latest filter purposely. For the most part, directories contain no content, many contain only a myriad of links for sites that in turn link to more sites, and basically take the visitor on a wild goose chase. Certainly, this is not what was intended for the Internet. And, unfortunately, link directories as an entire culture are going to find themselves wiped out and at the bottom of the dung-heap before too long. So why is Google fed up enough with the link directories to want to exterminate them?
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