| Detailed Review: DirSpace Directory |
Detailed Review: DirSpace Directory Date Reviewed: 06-04-2007
Name: DirSpace Directory
URL: http://www.dirspace.com/
Type: General
PageRank: 6/10 (Mainpage)
Looks & Design: The first impression - not bad. Looks a bit like those blogs you see out there nowadays. Very nice top logo too. Someone took the effort to designed the beautiful and unique looking logo (looks like the same designer for Aviva & SevenSeek). Both the font size and the colour used is good enough for me. However, the content area seemed too narrow and restricted to me. It would be better to widen the content area just a little to prevent less scrolling for their users. But overall, a very nice stylish design which I like very much.
They have their categories and some of their subcategories displayed on the frontpage. But due to the design, it looks narrow and feels like it's just not the main part of their site. But hey, I finally found a web directory that explains what it's purpose is on the main page without the need to browse to an "About Us" page. And why not? You can find some featured categories on the main page as well. The best part, there is no sitewide advertisements or even external links on this site. Very neat.
I found some spelling mistakes on the front page ("descripted" and "apparal") and some on their submit pages ("instand"), hope they correct it soon. It doesn't look professional to have spelling mistakes for a paid directory.
Functionality: There is no way to submit your site to this directory from the frontpage. You need to browse into their subcategories and only then will you be able to submit your site. I always hate this troublesome step. But I guess the thing is that it gives submitters a chance to look at the listings and see whether they have submitted to the correct category. And it also gives dirSpace a chance to show off their well writen articles too. Yes, if you browse through their categories, you will see that every category has some information on the subject at hand. And these articles are very well writen. Of course, I don't mean that they are like literature masterpieces, but understandable and functionable writeups. I am pretty impressed. It even comes with acronyms! This would take a lot of effort and time (or perhaps money) to get it up.
This directory does not have a lot of category options nor does it has a lot of listings. However, some of their categories can be very crowded (try the web directory category with 93 regular listings and 8 premium listings!). Certainly not a category which I would like to submit my site to, considering the fact that this directory has very few other types of listings. From what I can see, dirSpace directory doesn't have more than 3 levels of categories, which is a good thing. But they do limit their listings to 10 per page. And their premium listings seem to be limited to 10 per category as well. If you are thinking of submitting to this directory, the most important step is to look at which category you are planning to submit it to.
dirSpace directory limits the site description to 300 characters. Although I always recommend more text for Search Engines, for this case, it is acceptable. Why? Because they do have their own writeup on the topic. Furthermore, if you were to look through their listings, you would see that their site descriptions are better than what most other directories have. You won't see blank category pages here that's for sure. If you take their premium option, you will get an additional "details page". They arranged their listings alphabetically, so those titles with numbers and "a" will be in front. Picture yourself getting your beloved "Zoo Directory" into their directory, only to find it at the end of the pile. Worse, you will see Alive & Aviva directories at the front. But of course, there is always the premium option.
dirSpace directory suffers from the lack of content, and worse of all, it doesn't have much listings. No blogs, no articles, no nothing and little listings. But I am pretty sure, it will make up for it soon as it grows bigger in terms of the number of listings (it's pretty cheap). Although nothing to shout about, dirSpace does add their own useful sites on their directory as well.
Price: Regular - US$6.00 One-time payment, Premium - US$40.00 per year
dirSpace offers free submission if your site is non-profit or educational. But I cannot find the submission option for that.
Search Engine Friendliness: This directory has a mainpage PR of 6. Most of their main categories have PRs of 4 to 5, while their subcategories range from PR 0 to 5. However, it is important to note that their PR distribution is not consistent. In fact, you will find that some main categories have a PR value of 0 but their inner ones have PR value of 5. Not sure what happened here, but perhaps they did some internal restructuring and the URLs went off. And by browsing through their categories, some are empty and with a high PR. So you could get a significant PR boost by getting listed here if you know which category to submit to.
You don't need to worry about sitewide links "stealing" your precious PR, there is none at all. Neither are there any other outgoing links other than those in their listings. Really, this directory is "PR leak" proof.
At the time of writing, dirSpace Directory has about 1,300 pages indexed by Google. Not very impressive. But if we were to compare some other directories and the fact that they don't have "detail pages" for their regualr listings, I think it is not as bad as it looks. And this directory is not really that old either. In addition, looking it's pricing, I am sure it will continue to grow fast. However, one thing I have discovered, one of it's main category is not indexed by Google at all (http://www.dirspace.com/dir/2.php). Hmmm.....and I couldn't find anything wrong with the link or the page itself. Could be a glitch with Google. There are some supplemental pages too. But most of them are due to duplicate submission pages. The number of backlinks they have according to Google is 14,500. Quite a good figure and perhaps it explains why it's PR is so high. Furthermore dirSpace Directory does not have a deep structure, so I believe that search engine bots will be able to find your site on this directory pretty quick. Just don't submit to their web directory category, especially if your directory is doesn't start with a number of the letter "a". This category is just too crowded.
dirSpace does have content for search engines to index. Nearly every category page has a unique writeup on their topic at hand, especially for those categories with not much listings. So you don't have to worry about completely empty categories. I think this would really help the directory. Empty categories do have Google adsense advertisements in them if you are click-hungry though. But I would prefer them to have editors add their own authority listings into empty categories. Much better than Adsense. And meta tag descriptions for each category is different. As I mentioned before, not all their site descriptions are one-liners at least. And premium listings come with a "details page". With both text content and great backlinks and ever growing (and hence changing) listings, I believe the dirSpace is an attractive place for Search Engine spiders.
They do not allow users to submit their own anchor text for their site's title which is too bad. Only the actual site title is allowed. And no deeplinks allowed either. Not really good for those looking to improve their keywords rankings.
Value: US$6 on a PR6 directory? Why not? I would say it is very value for money, although all you can get here is possibly some PR juice and a little help in ranking. You can forget about traffic.
And if you do submit your site, you should choose a less crowded category. And since currently it is not crowded, you can get the full benefit.
Overall: A very good and you get most out of your buck type of directory if you have 6 bucks to spare. For a webmaster, this beats a Starbucks coffee latte anytime.
Comments: Bad thing about this directory, it is the lack of advertisements and promotion that will hamper it's growth. With it's pricing, it should be a pretty popular and well known directory by now. But I seldom seen it being advertised on forums or anywhere. In fact, I never heard of it before until the directory owner told me about it. What it needs is a marketing biz!
They should also be trying to get more quality listings and other content into their directory. Even just a blog will help.Pros:
- Looks quite appealing
- Decent PR, can be quite a significant push for some categories
- Very well priced - It's US$6 for a perm listing!
- Well written article for each category | Cons:
- Doubt there will be much traffic
- May get crowded in the future, some categories already have
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You might want to take a look at our other reviews as well:
- Detailed Review on Alive Directory
- Detailed Review on Aviva Directory
- Detailed Review on GoGuides Directory
- Detailed Review on SevenSeek Directory
- Detailed Review on Octopedia Directory
- Detailed Review on Ask Directory
- Detailed Review on Skaffe Directory
- Detailed Review on Index-It Directory
- Detailed Review on Wow Directory
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