What types of directories are seen as sources of paid links?

Key Takeaways

we have a question from Fabio rata in Brazil Fabio asks will Google consider Yahoo directory and best of the web as sources of paid links if no why is this different from another site that sells links well I've answered this question in the past but since enough people are curious to ask I'll do the Spiel again uh whenever we look at whether a directory is useful to users we say okay what is the value out of that directory so you know do they go out and find entries on their own uh or the do they only wait for people to come to them you know how much do they charge and what is the editorial service that's being charged if a director takes $50 and every single person who ever applies into the directory automatically gets in for that $50 there's not as much editorial oversight as something like the Yahoo directory where people do get rejected so you know if there's no editorial value ad there then that is much closer to paid links in fact if you look at our Web Master quality guidelines we used to have a guideline that says you know submit your site to directories and we gave a few example directories and what we find or what we found was happening was people would get obsessed with that line and they would go out and look for a lot of directories and there were people who were like oh well if people are looking for directories I'll make a directory and so you saw all these Fly by Night directories you know that would start up and say oh yes I'm the page rank six directory you give me $50 and you'll automatically get an entry in my directory and uh you know it's not as if those type of listings are the sort of things that users really value or that do a lot of uh good in our search results or that we want to do a lot of good so we ended up taking out that mention in our Web Master guidelines so that people don't get obsessed with directories and think yes I have to go find a bunch of different directories to submit my site to so there are some directories that do carry weight you know the Yahoo directory does a good job of editorial discretion and actually doing a review and and rejecting uh you know a significant number of entries that are low quality so the question in your mind whenever you're considering a directory is you know what is the value ad do they you know have high standards I have a blog post out where I talk about some of the other different factors of a directory and whether we might consider it as real um but those are some of the factors that you should ask yourself about so by those measures no the Yahoo directory is not just automatically paid links uh typically paid links are going to be much lower quality they're going to be much more automatic people will give you whatever anchor text you want all those sorts of things um so there is a difference and uh at the same time don't go overboard worrying about submitting your site to every directory if you make a great site and try to make out make sure that people find out about it those are some of the things that really make a difference not okay I have to go submit my site to at least five directories or at least 10 directories or anything like that