They were the next great thing. People were spending thousands of dollars a month on promoting the business, general, and niche web directories. Then suddenly Google, and probably other search engines, wielded their might and changed the entire scenario.
For the directory owner who was primarily interested in selling link subscriptions, this would come as a death knell. But, in the long run, this is a good thing and the best directories will actually emerge stronger, some day. Let us try to understand this.
On the one hand is the directory owner who thinks of his site as a web resource. This person will develop unique content, arrange for intuitive navigation, create customized and relevant category structure, offer multiple and well thought out payment options and plans. On the other hand is the fly by night owner who will take a basic script and make a little noise and get paid entries and then just let the site languish.
In the heydays of web directories, one of the interesting by-products was that the biggest customers of free / featured / reciprocal / permanent / etc entries were actually your competitors. So, what you had to do was make a directory,...