| Detailed Review: Wow Directory |
Detailed Review: Wow DirectoryDate Reviewed: 28-03-2007Name: Wow Directory URL: http://www.wowdirectory.com Type: General PageRank: 6/10 (Mainpage)  Looks & Design: It is unique indeed with all those funky font and images. Kind of refreshing to see a directory with a different design from the rest. And the colours used is good enough, especially since it doesn't clash with each other. I kind of like websites which mix their colours well. However, Wow Directory does look a bit messy to me. Trying to find navigation links is difficult because you will not be sure which is hyperlinked and which isn't. And I am not sure whether this is intentional or not, but they have different types of hyperlinks on different sections on the same page. Sure it is cool, but confusing nevertheless. On it's frontpage, they have the main categories displayed as well as to their business profiles. At the footer, they have just one sitewide link. Not other advertisements on their site as well (other than for their own Search Engine, free Article Directory and free Classifieds). Yes, there are no distracting banners here. Functionality: If you want to learn how to submit to their directory, you can click on "how to add" button on the top right corner to watch their intense video. Or you can just browse to the category you want to submit your site to and then choose "Add URL" on the bottom right of the category section. You will note that they have a unique option in which you can have a Podcast presentation. Pretty neat, seeing that nowdays podcast are becoming more and more popular. However, I couldn't find any listing with the podcast thing enabled, so I am not sure how this will work. For the title, you can add important keywords along with the site title. This will definitely make this directory more attractive to webmasters as you can make full use of the anchor text. Best of all, it doesn't seem to be a limit to the amount of keywords you can use. Just make sure it doesn't look spammy. From what I can see, it looks like the regional option for Wow Directory is quite worth the while. You can get listed in 4 categories with just one submission. Wow Directory has a impressive number of categories for webmasters to choose from. However, they have very deep levels of categories as well. And adding their local & regional categories into the mix, it can get pretty confusing to navigate this directory. You should only use the local & regional category to streamline your search. But then, this directory is huge and it sure has a lot of listings. To give a little example how big their directory is, you can check their "Web Site Designers" categories, they have over 320 listings on that category alone. The good thing about this directory, you can see that if a particular category gets too crowded, a new category will be added (eg Web Site Designers 2, Web Site Designers 3 and so on). And Wow Directory limits their sponsored listings to 20 per category. I am not too sure how Wow Directory arranges their listings, most likely it is arranged by the date of submission. Another interesting feature Wow Directory has is the Business Profiles. It's sort of like a yellow pages kind of thing, which allows their clients to have a "details page" about their business as well as up to 5 links to their websites. These links can be to their inner pages or to other sites. Furthermore, these links can also be included with the site descriptions. Yes, that's in-content links. However, these business profiles are categorized by regions and not by business type. Not very sure what the purpose of this Business Profile is if it is only categorized by region. With that said, all business profiles will also be listed in the main categories as well. That will get you listed up to 9 categories with this submission. There are sponsored listings in the business profiles categories as well, but try as I might, I could not find the option for it. I believe that the space for it has probably been sold out. I was browsing through some of the business profiles, I discovered this page. Looks like the business type of TESSCO Technologies is being a general web directory! And from their guidelines, Wow Directory doesn't accept gambling sites. But somehow one of the business profile sites is a sports betting site. You can view it here. Isn't betting also considered as gambling? As I mentioned in my previous reviews, a directory should have a significant amount of listings for it's visitors to search for information. And without a doubt, Wow Directory has it. It is a "content-rich" directory and the sheer number of listings is it's main strength. If you were to browse through the listings, these sites are legitimate sites and most of them have good content. I am sure you won't see spam sites in their listings. And when there is quality listing and content, there is traffic. I think the ultimate purpose of anyone getting listed in a directory is because we want to drive traffic to our site right? This is probably the main reason why I like this directory. And it looks like their editors did a good job reviewing the submitted sites. Wow Directory limits their site description to 200 characters. And browsing through their directory, you could see a number of listings with just 1 line of site description. Really too bad for Wow Directory. Worse still they do not have any detail or information pages for their regular or sponsored listings. But seriously, I don't think that this matters to their human visitors and to Search Engines judging from the size of this directory. Price: Express (Permanent, one time payment) - US$43, Sponsored (Yearly) - US$65, Bulk (10 submissions) - US$220, Business Profiles (Permanent, One time payment) - US$100 Wow Directory offers free submission on "most" every weekends, so keep your finger crossed if you want to avoid paying the submission fee. As I mentioned in my GoGuides review, I find bulk submissions just plain wrong. This kind of submissions is usually for SEOers to submit their clients' sites. It doesn't give any value to Wow Directory and it's other clients nor to it's visitors. Search Engine Friendliness: First of all, I would like to mention the number of pages Google has Wow Directory indexed. It's 568,000 pages. Yes, that's more than half a million pages indexed. However, you should note that Wow Directories has a very large number of categories (especially from the local & regional categories) with a lot of the same content on different categories (like those in the business profile category). So, that number is definitely inflated and it doesn't actually give us an indication of the true number of listings. At least, Wow Directory doesn't allow the indexing of their submit pages. I bet that if they did, then the indexed figure would be even higher. And from my manual checking, some of the pages are in supplemental usually because of those local & regional categories having the exact same subcategories as the main one. Wow Directory has 53,000 backlinks (not accurate) according to Google. Not a bad amount of backlinks. And if you are worried about the deep levels of categories Wow Directory has, you don't need to worry. Why? Because most of the deep (or hard to reach) categories are in the local & regional categories but when you get listed in the local & regional categories, you get listed in the main category as well. So Search Engines can still get to your site from there pretty fast. With both content and backlinks, this directory should be spidered very often by Search Engines. Wow Directory's mainpage has a PR value of 6, while it's main categories have PR values of 4. It is also interesting to note that some of the business profile pages have a PR value of 3. Not too bad considering that they have a lot of listings in their directory. However, if you are looking at this directory to boost your PR, I would tell you to look for other directories, especially one with less listings. Wow Directory's strength lies with the number of quality listings it has and not it's PR flow. Furthermore, with that much listings, traffic should be very good in this directory. Some of them will surely come to your site if you get listed here. They use the category title for their meta tag descrptions. Very convenient, but at least it is not the same throughout the entire directory. I would certainly prefer a more substantial meta tag description myself but that's just me. A good point is that they allow their listings to have important keywords in their title other than just the site name. Most directories only allow the site name, which usually won't help you rank for your keywords. The 200 characters limit for site descriptions is also another letdown. However, the business profile pages is another story. I have seen some of those profiles with 1000 over characters and anchor text smartly placed among the site descriptions. Certainly, there will be something for Search Engine spiders to index and those additional anchor text can really help you rank if you use them wisely (think deeplinks). Not to mention, you can link to other sites as well. Very good for SEO indeed. Another important point to note about the business profile page. It can be linked from up to 9 categories. Which means that the business profile page will have greater exposure than the rest of the listings. And that includes Search Engine crawlers too. But I wonder why they don't allow a direct link to their client's site on the category pages and have another link to the business profile page? This would probably add more value to their clients. Wow Directory is considered as a "Authority Site" by Google. This of course doesn't mean that Wow Directory is actually an Authority Site, it just means that Google knows that a lot of searchers have searched for and visited this site. What does this mean? It means that this site has good traffic! And the number of listings this directory has would confirm that this directory does have traffic. There will be people searching for information on this site. And having this "authority site" status would indicate that their outgoing links are more trusted than others. Value: A bit expensive but I think it is worth it, considering that you will probably get some traffic from this directory. And since Wow Directory is a large directory with a lot of listings, getting the sponsored listing can help increase your site's visibility among so many listings. But it's too bad the sponsored option is yearly payment. If you are a business and you can afford it, the "business profile" option would be a very good choice. Good exposure, lifetime listing and a good number of backlinks. Overall: Very good directory. A bit on the costly side. Comments: I have to admit, when I first saw this directory, other than the design, I didn't think that it would impress me that much. But it did. It has tons of very useful and innovative features for the webmaster. And just the quantity and the quality of the listings alone, would impress the most veteran of web directory owners too. I like the funky design, but I think that the design of the site clashes with their business theme. You know how uptight these corporate types are, right? They need a normal "commerical design" and not something out of the ordinary to make them feel at home.
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 DirSpace Directory |