• SEO Roundtable, Monday, October 6, 2008 2:15 PM

Google recently updated its Webmaster Guidelines -- removing the line that suggested submitting a site to directories like Yahoo and DMOZ. "As you can imagine, this has set an early spark of flames through the SEO/SEM community," says Barry Schwartz, picking up a number of the discussions for this post.

Google's official stance is that directory links are still valuable ... somewhat. "I wouldn't necessarily assume that we're devaluing Yahoo's links, I just think it's not one of the things we really need to recommend," said John Mu, in a Google Groups thread. "If people think that a directory is going to bring them lots of visitors (I had a visitor from the DMOZ once), then it's obviously fine to get listed there. It's not something that people have to do though."

The ensuing discussion crosses a number of forums, including Sphinn and Search Engine Watch, with many readers equating the change to Google finally addressing the hypocrisy of penalizing Webmasters for buying links (and the link sellers themselves), while still advocating usage of fee-based directories like Yahoo.

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