Link Directory Genocide - A hyperlinking analogy
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Let’s try to think of this in perspective as Google perhaps may very well view it. The Internet is like a great big road map, with links being the roads, and websites being the towns, cities, landmarks, and great historical places to visit. Let’s say you decide you want to learn about the “women of World War II”, and you ask Google for directions by doing a search, because you want to be taken down the best road that will take you directly to the place these women reside so that you may hear their story. You click on a link that has been returned in the SERPs; you may find this link like a set of directions, and set out to find these heroic women you want to know so much about.
You would be exceedingly frustrated and irritated, however, to find that the place to where you had been directed not only doesn’t have what you are looking for, but also has a completely new set of directions for you to follow, like getting a scrap of paper found during a scavenger hunt with nothing more than a clue. This forces you to set out on the road again. Imagine your dismay when you finally reach your destination again only to find a sign that tells you that you’ll have to take another exasperating new course to your destination. It’s enough to make you throw your hands in the air in disgust and just give up and go home.
This is how people feel when they search the web only to find a set of sites with nothing more than a bunch of links. Then they have to scour around for the entirely new set of directions, which may in turn lead to a whole new site of nothing more than just more links. In Google’s eyes, this makes a site not relevant to what the searcher had in mind when they clicked on that link in Google’s SERPs, even though some might consider their collection a set of useful links. And who will the searcher blame when he or she cannot find what they are looking for in the SERPs? Why the person who gave them the original set of directions, of course.
It is those sites that have been getting the axe, burned at the stake and otherwise dispatched in the SERPs rather regularly, reminiscent of the Dark Ages, complete with morbid executions that seem nothing short of barbaric. Perhaps Google hoped they would simply fade away in the face of newer and better search technology, and when that didn’t work, felt they had no choice but to take a far more aggressive stance. I think that many of these link directories had been steadily losing ground for many months. Some of those webmasters had enough sense to evaluate why their sites were on the decline, and change their sites into something redeeming that may be what searchers really want. Those people are not to whom I am speaking.
It is to those KinderStarts of the Internet to whom I refer. You cannot expect to forever keep your 10 million viewers and never update your site, or not provide content for your visitors and still expect to be a valuable resource for long. If anyone is to blame, it is your selves. So while I can argue that Google may be performing Link Directory Genocide, it is really you, O Link Bearer, who is actually committing Link Directory Suicide. And the only crime here, ladies and gentlemen, is resting on your laurels in the Internet world. It is almost shameful to blame Google for your own lack of foresight.
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