You can never win when you review a directory for a wide variety of reasons not least the owners ability to take critique. However in this case the owner asked me to review his three directories and that I’ll do. As usual I’m simply going to be honest and impartial. I’m deliberately going to avoid mentioning what scripts they use because to me that’s irrelevant even though important at the same time. Besides, I’d be called bias simply because of my clear allegiance to the phpLynx script.
I don’t use the tools webmasters can use such as FasterFox which uses pre-fetching methods because I believe (and statistics support me) that the ordinary user still rely on internet explorer with just over 80% of the browser market. I want directory owners to understand that the critique I offer is not to condemn their site to ridicule by their peers, its to show you how perhaps an ordinary member of the public, the potential customer is going to see your site. If my reviews are criticised for anything they shouldn’t be criticised for putting the customer first which is the aim of this.
So to the task in hand…
The directory is the relatively new Web Links Directory that was set up in September 2007. Initial thoughts on it was that it was fairly fast loading, not too overbearing and basically doing what it says it does.
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Posted By admin
Apr 21, 2008
Most directory owners will now be aware of the changes that Alexa claim to have changed their methods for ranking but does anyone really think they can’t still be abused? I’ve never held any credibility with them, they are to me about as useful as a car with square wheels.
So how could they improve their rankings? They certainly haven’t let on what they’ve done so its all guesswork from here. They claim to be able to get a broader picture of who visits your site now, but how can they do that if the surfer doesn’t use their widget in their toolbar? I may be wrong but from the way I see it the only people who use Alexa are directory owners, a few SEO companies, (most reputable SEO’s stay a mile away from it because of its inherent unreliability).
In my time I’ve probably looked at well over a million websites covering a massive range of topics from pets to porn (for the right reasons of course). I’ve never once seen Alexa on these pages and doubt very much if the owner of a site such as Pets.com could be bothered to install what has for all intent and purpose seen to be nothing short of spyware? Even to this day many anti-virus and anti-spyware softwares detect Alexa as spyware or greyware and delete any files that they could use to track your behaviour which they need to be able to collate their statistics.
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Posted By admin
Apr 18, 2008
Following our recent blogs on directory design and integrity I was asked if I’d do a review, and whether good or bad, that we could publish it. We did take the time to notify the directory owner who might by the time you get to read this review have dealt with most if not all of the issues. That’s assuming he wants to.
Thanks go out to the owner of the Directory under review Jude, ( better know as popotalk)
Dirsensei Web Directory
TECHNICAL DATA: Speed of loading (nb: There can be a fluction on download times). for further information on this use the same software that I did here.
Connection Rate Download Time
14.4K - 117.02 seconds
28.8K - 60.01 seconds
33.6K - 51.86 seconds
56K - 32.32 seconds
ISDN 128K - 11.98 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps - 3.78 seconds
This is not good. The general consensus within the design industry for many years suggest that a website should load within 5-8 seconds or risk losing potential visitors. Not everyone has ISDN, in fact most still have good old fashioned cable so its critical you get your site to load as fast as possible without compromising on quality. This site had 13 images in it which can either be optimized or reduced. The test I ran suggested replacing graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests amongst other things.
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Posted By admin
Apr 8, 2008
Having gone over the fundamentals of how to maintain your directory via editorial standards, and maintenance, its perhaps time we looked at the importance design plays in a directory. I’m going to discuss whether it plays an important part with both the search engines and visitors alike. The expert directory owner will probably already know most of this so the blog is aimed more at the newcomer. If anyone out there is willing to share and has something to add then that would be great as no doubt I’ve probably missed out some.
Before we carry on I’d like to list what I think are a few basic essentials that a good website should take into account when designing no particular order I’ve made some bullet points of what I think makes for a well designed directory.
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Posted By admin
Apr 4, 2008
