Today I am going to take a look at the V7N Directory which is part of the V7 Network which also owns and operates two more directories, Seven Seek and Bluefind, so to say the least they have quite some experience on creating, promoting and running a directory.
Let’s start from the obvious, the looks. Overall I find the design pleasing and nice in the eyes, however I don’t understand why they chose to have different colors for the categories, it looks good at first but when you are browsing the directory after a while it becomes tiring for the eyes, at least for me. Another issue would be that some people might find it hard to find how to suggest a site, I guess they have realised that and that’s why they created the how to submit page (notice the screenshot), the only problem is that I can’t find it linked from anywhere on the main site.
A thing that is open for discussion that they decided to use a subdomain of an already established site to create this directory. Generally I am against directories as part of a site. Not because it will affect the value of the listings but because it doesn’t help the directory to get brand recognition that as I have said before is probably the number one factor that will determine whether a directory will become successful or not. Nonetheless, in this case I think it was a good choice to use a subdomain. After all, V7 Network already own two standalone directories. Why do I believe it was a good decision you may ask. The answer is simple, although I don’t know what are the intentions and goals of John Scott for this directory I doubt that he wanted to create a directory that would have huge brand recognition, it’s more like an addition to V7 Network that at first is going to get the benefits of being part of a well known network and in the future, in its turn will help the network grow. In addition to that, I really liked John Scott’s idea of adding search boxes on Webmaster Forum and his intention to add the search boxes on the entire V7 Network. This will bring searches and searches bring traffic to the sites listed and as I have said before a directory that can send traffic is better than a high PR directory, at least for me. Now this doesn’t only positively affect the value of the listings but also benefits the entire network, being able to keep your visitors to your network sites for various of their Internet activities is very important.
Other important factors when looking at a directory are the category structure and the search engine saturation. V7N directory has a really nice and really extensive category structure and a excellent search engine saturation with more than 26.000 pages indexed by Google at the time that I write this review. For the PR obsessed people, V7N directory got a nice PR6 during the last PR update and I must say that PR passed nicely to the category pages as well, despite the fact that the extensive category structure results in a lot of subcategories being 3 or 4 levels deep.
Finally, pricing. I have to admit that I hate buying something without knowing how much I need to pay and as you can see here there is no mention on the pricing and I wasn’t able to find a mention in the directory’s pages. I was planing on submitting one site for now but without knowing what I need to pay I just hit the back button, maybe it’s just me but this is my biggest gripe with this directory which I must say is an overall great directory.
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July 16th, 2006 at 3:33 am
Thanks for the very thorough review. Very in depth and thoughtful!