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Problem is there so many directory scripts out there, anyone can start one in minutes. The you have another piece of internet rubbish full of degrading data. There also scripts that are set to scrape public directory data, re-package and then display under a new URL, obviously with adverts etc. We get scraped daily, and our system now auto blocks IP's that look at too many pages too quickly, plus alerts if we have too many visits from a single IP, but they still get through. We have a good fix though, as we overlay with 0843 numbers, which also get scraped, so happy days..

Unfortunately a lot of business listings are registered by seo companies and not business owners. The majority of SEO peeps based in countries that serve up a cracking curry or specialise in noodles aren't to particular in getting details correct, or tend to consistently duplicate. We auto and manually delete literally 100's of listings a day from our UK and US directories, all of which are generated from 3rd rate SEO companies. The sad thing is someone is paying them to do this, so some poor mug thinks they are getting a good service, as they get a list of the 100's of directories they are put on, but any half decent directory will simply delete them.


This is an interesting one and I've spoke to loads of directories over the years trying to find a way round this. Market Location are a company that have tried to tackle this, and you update with them, and your details are amended on their network, which is loads of directories from Thomsons to small ones. But there's no email address details, so we're not interested in the data.

One new idea is from a provider called telnames, and they are positioning themselves as a one stop provider, and we have agreed in principle to taking their data feed, who are sending data to Yahoo, Bing, BT and others. A service in the States called Yext is trying to tackle the same problem and is slowly growing in popularity.

There are all sorts of issues around data protection, individual website T&C's, and I gave up any ideas of trying to fix it ages ago. Whoever cracks it will be a wealthy person!

Yup. Said it a thousand times, if you sell a product or service, you want targeted traffic. ie a fighting chance that the odd person may put their hand in their pocket, or pick the phone up

That said, as a directory we are actually the opposite and want every bit of traffic we can, targetted, untargetted, redirected, referral, accidental, and then we apply a magic formula of xyz traffic generates xyz revenue from monetization

But targetted traffic for our actual products

Interesting response Linda.

My wife heads up the offline marketing team for OCR, who handles curriculum, exams and stuff, which is surprisingly very traditional in its approach with offline marketing, mailshots for teachers, heads etc, but it kind of echoes your sentiment about using govt backed organisations.


I think you can breakdown small businesses into categories, and I'd agree with you have those who are commercial and aiming for growth, but then you have tradesmen (is that person??) and professionals who may be a 1 or 2 man band, but will remain at a certain size, who can or only choose to service a set number of clients. You could include IT consultants and web freelancers.

But then I think there is another category, which is then the hobby business or lifestyle business as it's often referred to. This can be anything from someone making greeting cards for craft fairs, to a husband and wife team running a B&B which gives them an income, but isn't the primary motivation.

Just my few shillings worth!

Aha thats what we need, more cynicism and conspiracy

Next you'll be saying large corporations can get away with paying less tax than they have to, and we all know that's not true.. perish the thought

Aww cheers


Chillaxing! If only Been one of them days, problems (is that challenges??), ear bashing, bugs and busy.

Looking forward to a few quiet stella's tonight though

Agree totally. It is a shame so many mid sized businesses have failed, especially long established ones, and are micro businesses going fill the void and grow, or remain as lifestyle businesses, which doesn't help employment.

Unless we all become self employed!

Coming from the IT industry I'd disagree, I remember the big IBM job layoffs, dumping contractors, then a sudden peak and taking on new staff, followed by another wave of redundancies. Other blue chip firms like Accenture and HP used to follow similar cycles as well.

So the SEO forums are hotting up, mickey mouse SEO companies are crying and webmasters are trembling as Googles Penguin is reborn as Penguin 2.0


credit www.zastavki.com

Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, Tweeted: https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/332917182990258176

"we do expect to roll out Penguin 2.0 (next generation of Penguin) sometime in the next few weeks though."

Interesting responses:
Gadget Heaven ‏@gadget_heaven 10 May
@mattcutts How big an impact do you expect this to have?

Matt Cutts ‏@mattcutts 10 May
@gadget_heaven we'll talk more about it as we get closer or soon after the launch.

So storms are on the horizon.

Once again, batten down the hatches, man the main brace, chuck the cheap outsourced SEO idiot overboard and steer a steady course!

Just saw this Scootek.

Yep, agree, no contest .uk

As Sandra says, .net is top level so makes targeted traffic more hard work.

Not a fan of org.uk for a commercial business, but .net is a useful as a chocolate teapot.

Is there a time when these potential customers all come together, such as an annual expo or trade fair? In which case off line could be a winner, from literature, flyers etc. But agree product/service type can also be decisive in marketing decisions.