I have been around forums for past few years and have been asking questions and getting help from the people here. I feel obligated to give something useful to the community. This may not be much but might be useful for some webmasters like me seeking incoming strong links. I came across this directory url.biz few weeks ago and find it extremely impressive. They have a innovative way of adding sites to their directory and have useful tools to manage your listings. I have no affiliatin with this directory and hope some of you will find it useful.

I like the directory it’s great. But one problem is if you add your site into the directory in which case I submitted my homepage link to recreation directory of the site. Then in return they needed a home page link from my site to their recreation directory which I can’t do. They rejected my listing because I did not have a return URL on my home page. Even I had like exchanged on my links page of the site.
Please let me know if anybody had similar experience or I am interpreting them wrong.

Hmm. I don't like sites that require that you link to them from your home page.

They do not require a link on your home page. However, they do require a link on the same page you are submitting to the directory. You can also write useful articles related to your subject matter which also gives you a boost on search engine placement.

DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THIS DIRECTORY

They are only interested in building up their own PR. Have a look at the source code for the page they link to you from! Your link is shrouded in js... you WILL NOT get any PR benefit from this as Google won't follow that link!

This is a crooked way of linking and so many unwary webmasters have fallen for it... all contributing to url.biz's PR but not getting any PR in return! So yes, sign up if you want to give them some more PR but don't be stupid enough - like I was - thinking you'll be getting a link from a high PR page and that it will boost your PR. IT WON'T!

crooked way of linking

I was not particularly impresed by this "gift". However, calling them crooked would only be valid if they promised you they are going to help your PR. If you assume something and someone doesn't deliver, that is not crooked. Just my <!-- PLUGIN:main_output -->.02.

greenleaves, I didn't call them crooked. I said it's a crooked way of linking That's an attack on the method rather than the perpertrators.

They are counting on the less clued up webmasters not realising that they are deriving no PR benefit. Have I got proof of their "intent"? No. It's conjecture born of experience. It's NOT an accident that the links are in js. It's NOT the case that all links on their site are in js by design. It's the case that ONLY outward links - i.e. links not going to other pages on their site - are blocked from getting any PR benefit. That's intentional ...with the only discernible reason being PR hogging. That's not considered squeaky clean. The description of how their directory differs from all others only serves to distract. They aren't really concerned about content - I know and I can sticky you some "proof" of that.

The issue of the "gift" does sound like pimping The kindly follow up to explain a misconception doesn't help distance the original poster from the site in question.

I registered at this site only because this thread comes up fairly high in Google SERPS for "url.biz" and I thought I'd give this community a "gift" of clarity

I do not own any directories, am not a competitor to them in any way, had my site listed there and was giving them a link back... till I realised the score. I do not know any of them and have no personal grudge against any of its owners. And no spiders were hurt in the creation of this post.

[ Message was edited by: newbie2 05/24/2004 01:29 pm ]

That's intentional ...with the only discernible reason being PR hogging. That's not considered squeaky clean.

PR hogging? That is like saying money hog just because someone doesn't give charity. I don't know what you consider squeaky clean, but in my bussiness point of view, there is nothing "dirty" about being a "hogg". Capitalism is based on "hogging". I'm not saying it is nice, but it is not like they are tricking anybody.

I do not own any directories,

You sure? I thought you wore the yahoo guy.

And no spiders were hurt in the creation of this post.

LOL

greenleaves, you can believe whatever you choose to believe - you can argue semantics - please yourself

I make no money out of this advice (to check if the links are hidden in js). But in passing this advice I may have helped at least one other webmaster. Maybe I'm not a capitalist. Maybe I don't need to derive some financial benefit from this. Maybe that's difficult for a "capitalist" to understand

I have a feeling that when webmasters realise the trick behind the links at this site.... they will be far less likely to "exchange" links with them. If I've opened at least one webmaster's eyes to these "crooked" links my time in posting here would not have been in vain.

I derive no financial benefit from posting either. I give my two cents and hope it helps someone.

I never argued that your post is not helpfull. I believe it is good to warn begginer webmasters about things like this. However, there is a difference between doing crooked things and straight bussiness (business is not always nice). When you say:

<quote>This is a crooked way of linking and so many unwary webmasters have fallen for it... </quote>

It makes it sound like they are crooks. They are not crooks unless they claim that this is a way to increse pr. Java linking is not crooked (like hidden text).

I don't mean to defend them, but I dislike it when people call a bad business deal crooked. It may be a bad deal, but you don't have to accept it. (I am in no way associated with url dot biz)

This is working very well

This thread is now the 2nd result in Google SERPS for the term "URL.biz", up from sixth. Keep up the good work guys.

I have not been around much on the forums but was surprised to see so many posts to this topic. I have good experience with URL.Biz and the article I have written there is driving some useful traffic. Sorry, if you feel the directory is not good, I do not have a problem with them and we are ok to place their link on front page of our site. PR is not the only thing that will get you good business, it is the quality of traffic and good links networking which will be more beneficial as opposed to having a high PR. Only my thoughts since everyone have the right to express.

OK, I have thought of it over and have changed our website link pointing to them to inline javascript link in similar fashion they are linking to us. To be fair to both parties now we have javascript vs javascipt links on both sides. I will keep you all posted if their link checker is able to detect this change. I should get an email from them in few days if they do detect this change. I would like to keep receiving the traffic from them but am prepared to dump them if necessary. Will keep you all posted. Sorry, I was just trying to help, personally I will never try a thing like that when exchanging links with others Thought I was giving something useful to the community here.

Spirderman, that was a good move. Of course if you've cloaked the link in js that is a modification of the html they gave you. I'm curious to see if they detect your cloaked link and contact you about that.

As far as traffic is concerned - they are a waste of time. I've had four pretty large sites in popular categories listed with them. In a 30 day period they sent a grand total of 9 visitors to all my sites.

That's because they aren't famous/well known like dmoz or even business.com is. They get hardly any visitors in comparison to those sites. The PR they have on URL.biz is all the result of an accident and I believe they will lose it soon.

They seem to be getting their PR mainly from gu.st/proj/SearchGoogle.html which gets it's PR from a page on Google's site. And, as soon as Google finds out what kind of page they are giving PR to (i.e. that the page has changed substantially) they will pull the link to gu.st/proj/SearchGoogle.html and URL.biz will be severely affected.

Spirderman, so ...what news?

Sorry to get back late on this. I have heard from the directory in less than 12 hours after I embedded their link to Javascript. I wrote back to them that we have changed the link to the same way they are linking back to us. They never replied and only received an automated email. I have taken their link out from my site because I feel it is not worth it. This is the end of story with them, at least by offering help to others I did learn something good

If you write articles with them you have a good chance of having those articles indexed and wranked fairly well which should lead to traffic to your site. If you don't then you're just looking for PR from a link. Buy it.

Also, you have to remember that they are one site that has a ton of work put into it. If they linked to so many sites they would always run the risk of being banned for linking to bad neighborhoods.

How would you feel if you wrote 20 articles that drove 100-200 visitors per month to your site and it dropped to zero because they linked to some guy who switched his site to a racism or warez site and got banned and in turn got URL.biz banned or penalized?

nuevojefe,

You are not correct about the articles being indexed. If you look at the site with google toolbar, you get PR8 on the home page, PR7 on the first level directory, and PR0 for ALL user pages. The articles do not get indexed. Only the first level directory gets indexed and that is only if you make it there by submitting more articles than everyone else.

[ Message was edited by: dmart 08/13/2004 04:21 pm ]

Another newbie here...

I'm sorry, but I don't see that links are buried in JavaScript. I am looking at http://www.url.biz/Shopping/Home_and_garden/ and I see perfectly indexable HTML links. There's a tiny bit of script on the page but it's not where all the links are. Tell me what I'm missing here.

I do wonder why the listings pages have such miserable pagerank. Anyone know why?

TIA!

To Newbie2

<<I have a feeling that when webmasters realise the trick behind the links at this site.... they will be far less likely to "exchange" links with them. If I've opened at least one webmaster's eyes to these "crooked" links my time in posting here would not have been in vain.>>

Looks like the wheels of progress do turn slowly (but justly) as I was looking to add my site to this company but will now pass. Thanks for explaining what is going on.

Ramblin Randy
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