| Detailed Review: GoGuides Directory & Search |
This is the updated review on GoGuides Directory. Due to several reason I have overlooked some points on this directory, I decided to "re-review" the directory. You can view the old review: Old GoGuides Directory & Search Review. With permission form Robert Barger, I have also included comments made by him in that review.Detailed Review: GoGuides Directory & SearchDate Reviewed: 23-02-2007 and again on 28-02-2007
Name: GoGuides Directory & Search
URL: http://www.goguides.org
Type: General
PageRank: 6/10
Looks & Design: Google Ripoff! Well, the logo anyways (ironically they have the Google logo on the frontpage as well, compare them). But somehow I like their logo more than Google's. The design is very much like any other web directory with the categories and subcategories displayed on the frontpage. Although they do have a lot of categories (and subcategories) and other links, they designed it in such a way that it doesn't look too messy. A thumbs up. I so wish Yahoo would ditch their portal style layout for a neater design. Goguides is using blue coloured fonts, which surprisingly works well in this case. It's just too bad that the main categories and the subcategories have nearly the same shade of blue which makes it slightly difficult to differentiate, especially on a cheap LCD Monitor I am currently using.
Functionality: Clicking on the ADD URL link will take you to the "Easy Submit" page. For this "Easy Submit" inclusion, they will provide you with a "guaranteed directory rating" which probably means that your listing will be at least in front of those without a rating. If you don't want to pay that hefty price tag, you need to use the "Express Submit" option. You can't access it from the front page, you need to browse to the category and choose "Express Submit". Hence this way, it is NOT EASY. It's err...Express. I was told that GoGuides rate all their listings without any bias, but I have noted several listings without any rating at all because they were not reviewed yet. I thought all listings should be reviewed first before being accepted??
Browsing through their categories, you would realize that they have a lot of listings (and categories). And they have very deep levels of subcategories. Try browsing to "GoGuides Directory > Local, Regional & World > North America > USA > Tennessee > Resources > Business & Economy > Real Estate > Memphis" and see what I mean. That page was last indexed by Google on 22 Dec 2006 (it's 22 Feb 2007 at the time of writing) and is in supplemental results in Google. It also has a Page Rank of 0. Reference: Here. Although PageRank doesn't hold much in terms of ranking, it does tell us something about the page. Either there are very few backlinks (and hence less likely crawled) or difficult to get to (not well structured) or the page is new. How many of you will be willing to browse so deep to find something, not to mention it could very well be a empty category without any listing? Some categories are empty, but some are pretty crowded with hundred over listings. Take for example, the Internet Marketing Category. GoGuides have a maximum of 10 listing per page, but for a crowded category, you will most likely not be placed on the first page since GoGuides sort their listings by "directory rating". So please be careful if you are planning to submit your site to this directory. If your site is content rich and useful to their visitors, you should get a good rating, pushing your site to the front. If not, then you should stay away.
My idea of a paid directory is sort of a premium service and that it will not have too many advertisements, in fact it should not have any advertisements at all. Even if they do have advertisements, it will be a few text links or some sponsors. But if you were to browse this directory, you will find that they not only have site sponsors (or adverts for Site Sponsors) and topic sponsors on every category page, they even have AdWords when you do Searches. This is very distracting to their users and doesn't look professional.
However one thing that I cannot complain about GoGuides is that they do have content. Content as what is supposed to be in a directory - site listings. When you browse or search for something, you will be rewarded with results - a page with the related sites. Unlike the previous 2 reviews I have done (their listings were few), GoGuides is a content rich directory. This is truly a full pledge "old school" directory. Not very much of these directories around anymore too. Most are just link farms or sites pushing PRs to their listings.
GoGuides doesn't accept Adult sites, but it accepted a listing for webhost which caters primarily for adult sites (try searching for Adult, it came out as the first result). Hmmm.....doesn't make much sense there, does it? But other than that, it seems that most of the listings are at least not spammy ones. There are some sites which are of really high quality and are very useful to their users. However I discovered a few deadlinks but this is expected from a mature directory.
Price: Permanent, one time payment. Express Submit - US$39.99, Easy Submit - US$69.95, Bulk Submit - Refer to their site for price range, Membership - Refer to their site for options
I don't find it suitable for a quality, spam-free directory to allow bulk submit which is usually for SEOers trying to get high rankings for their clients. They don't care about quality or content. How many real webmasters will have 50 websites to submit?? But anyway, all listings have to be approved by GoGuide's own editors, just that some may slip through the gaps.
Search Engine Friendliness: It's difficult to say whether GoGuides are Search Engine Friendly or not. They have some good points and some bad ones. GoGuides has 90,900 pages indexed by Google and 52,000 backlinks (not accurate) according to Google. Yahoo has 125,110 pages of GoGuides indexed. These are pretty impressive figures. However, even with such a huge number of backlinks, GoGuides' very deep directory structure means that Search Engine bots may not crawl these very deep level links. Even if they do crawl it, it won't be often. Popular categories are already crowded, which again mean that your listing may be buried into a inner page which will be crawled less often. As I mentioned before, some pages have not been reindexed for at least 2 months! Sure, the Easy Submit Option (US$69.95) will guarantee a directory rating, but what rating will you get? They have a 1 star rating to a 3 star rating. There is no gurantee of a 3 star rating anyways. However, with all these said, it is important to note that GoGuides is a trusted site (or an authority site) in the eyes of Google. Getting listed in GoGuides means that the link to your site is more valued (to Google) than from other sites. That goes for your anchor text to help pump you up for your keyword rankings as well. I had overlooked this important fact in my last review. My apologizes to the staff of GoGuides.
The mainpage of GoGuides has a PR value of 6. Most of it's categories and subcategories have a PR value of 4. Their inner categories usually have a range of PR3 to PR0. However, it doesn't seem GoGuides is interested in going the high PR route, which I admire very much. They are aiming for the rich content route. As I mentioned before, we see nowadays a lot of web directories building nothing but backlinks and backlinks to ensure themselves a high PR. Hence, they try to keep their PR high and outbound links few. These directories serve no purpose except to dish out PR to it's listings. But what really good about GoGuides is that people do come and visit this directory due to it's number of listings. Think of it as Yahoo directory (on a smaller scale) and you will know what I mean. Unlike the younger web directories, searching for information on this directory will yield results. So if you are looking for real traffic, this is the directory to go. And it's cheaper than BOTW!
GoGuide's Meta Descriptions are all based on the category names. Lazy, yes. But still better than having the same meta descriptions on all the pages right? It's doesn't have keyword rich URLs either, so that's a thumbs down for Search Engine Friendliness. The deep categories are also a big negative but I understand why they implemented it. GoGuides have a lot of listings on their directories, too few categories without any proper layout and arrangement will make it impossible to find them. Just that it will not be Search Engine Optimized seeing how many links you have to go through to reach inner pages - always a major problem with big sites.
GoGuides limits their client's site description to 200 characters for Express Submit but there doesn't seem to be a limit for Easy Submit. However looking at their listings, most site descriptions are still one-liners. I have always said that having a good site description can really help their listings, it allows a short preview of the site before actually clicking on the link. And without good text descriptions, Search Engines do not have much to index. I think GoGuides should do more than a little review on their listings and by adding important keywords and keyphrases into the site description, help improve both user experience and let Search Engines know what this listing is all about. Not surprising, GoGuides doesn't have a "details" page for it's listing.
Their news section gets all it's information from Newshub Feeds and are all news headlines. So I guess it is not really content here. But I think that the sheer number of quality listings on this directory is enough to qualify it as a suitable resource for searching of information.
Value: Of the old school directories, GoGuides is priced fairly reasonable. GoGuides doesn't have the name nor the prestige that Yahoo! or business.com or even BOTW, but for US$39.99/US$69.95 you get both traffic and backlinks. Could be very well worth it, especially for that all too important backlink. Not to mention, this backlink is from a trusted source! However, I doubt you will get a significant PR boost from listing on GoGuides though. And if GoGuides ditch all those distracting advertisements, I would wholeheartedly recommend it.
Overall: Nothing much to add, they just need more value for their paying clients.
Comments: GoGuides has a very confusing business model. It's a paid (premium) directory but it has a lot of advertisements. It even has adsense advertisements on it's searches. If I am to pay for inclusion, I certainly don't want other advertisements to draw attention away from my listing.
GoGuides should also make it easier for others to submit listings. Having "Express" and "Easy" submit options is confusing, just name them regular and sponsored(or featured). And as for the "Express" option, the money is not refundable if the site is rejected? Why? No one should pay an editor to get rejected. Hiding the Express Option in the categories is not ethnical as well. Have ALL the options available in the Submit page and refund if the site is rejected. And in my opinion, having this "Directory rating" is questionable. How does the editor rate the sites? Is there any set rules to follow?
The next complain I have is the extremely long Terms of Service, Submission Guidelines and other rules. My head hurt. Makes me think that GoGuides is a purely commerical entity armed with thousands of corporate lawyers with too much free time in their hands. And did you know the GoGuides don't accept sites that sell "any food that is not packaged or does not comply with all laws governing the sale of food to consumers by commercial merchants"? Well, now you know.
GoGuides has been around for a long time now. Officially, it been up and running since 2001. For an solely Internet entity, that's like centuries ago. You don't have to worry about this site closing down and leaving you high and dry.
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 SevenSeek Directory
- Detailed Review on Skaffe Directory
- Detailed Review on Octopedia Directory
- Detailed Review on Ask Directory
- Detailed Review on Index-It Directory
- Detailed Review on Wow Directory
- Detailed Review on DirSpace Directory
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