Anyway, kudos to the people at Search and Go that have built and are still building a really nice directory.

The design of the directory is simple but effective. Two things that caught my eye are:
1. They have decided to include the latest links at the front page (about 50 of them). At first I was surprised by this, but later I realised that the links don’t point at the sites but at the categories that the sites are listed, which in my opinion creates a great internal linking structure.

2. The not commercial categories and the categories that in most directories don’t receive a lot of submissions, like Art have very few subcategories while the commercial Categories like Business have a far more extensive subcategory structure. This is something that I generally agree with and I have talked about it previously in my category structure post. However I think in this case they have taken it a bit to the extreme.

The search engine saturation is good with about 2300 indexed pages by Google. The problem is that Google considers most of these pages similar. The reason is quite obvious, they have used the same meta description for all the pages of the directory. This is a mistake that even large directories like Skaffe seem to have made.

Let’s not forget our friends the PR obsessed. Human Ranked Directory is a PR4 directory, however the inner categories haven’t gotten any PR yet. I don’t know the reason for this but it’s probably because the directory is still new.

Conclusion: Do I recommend it? Yes I do, it’s free and the owners seem to have spend quite some time developing it. I don’t know if it a completely homemade script or a customised commercial directory script but it certainly isn’t the average cookie cutter directory and best of all it accepts free submissions.

Search Engine Saturation: Koopy has 431 pages indexed by Google (at the time of this review) which is not much compared with other directories but lets not forget that Koopy is a niche directory with only four top level categories (and no details pages for the listings). So I guess search engine saturation is very good.

Link Popularity: According to Yahoo, koopy has about 12.500 backlinks. Also if you look at the backlinks they are mostly relevant (at least the first ones) so it seems that the owner has done a pretty good link campaign. (Check number 7 , in case you get different results because of geotargetting it’s directories blog)

Category Structure: As you can see it is a very niche directory and there are very few different categories structures that could have been used. My main objection is that using as top categories free and paid and reciprocal might cause a few problems (I am saying that from my own experience since I did the same mistake at my directory). The main problem would be that directories turn from free to paid and vice versa all the time so it will be difficult to keep the listings accurate and up to date. IMHO it would be better if the top categories where General and Niche.

PR: For the PR obsessed Koopy has a pagerank of 2, but the top level categories all are PR4. This is probably due to the fact that Google didn’t update sites that had PR before the 4/4 update/

Traffic : Obviously I don’t know the traffic stats but I was going to take a look at my logs to see how much traffic it sends to my directory but I just realised that it isn’t listed. I guess I forgot to submit it. The Alexa rank is 218,623, not great but not bad either for such a niche directory.

Pricing: Koopy is currently free but offers sponsored listings for 24.95$. It doesn’t mention if it is a recurring fee so I assume it is a one off payment. The price is really reasonable, especially if you consider the fact that it has very limited real estate to sell featured links because of the very low number of categories.

Conclusion: Koopy as a niche directory does a pretty good job, especially in a very limited niche where there are some really big established directories like ISEDB and Search Engine Colossus. It’s a nice looking directory and you just can’t beat the price.

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.

DirSpace is a general web directory that accepts free listings for non-profit websites and paid listings for commercial websites. A model that is quite common and I believe one of the best ways to create a directory. Regular listings cost 6$ and Premium listings cost 40$ per year. The prices in my opinion are very reasonable and even cheap.

Let’s take a look now at my usual checklist when I submit to paid web directories.

1. Indexed Pages: dirSpace has over 17.000 pages indexed by Google which a sign of very good search engine saturation.

2. PR: Dirspace has a PR6, very good since all directory owners know that it is really hard to get high PR for directories since very few people will link to a directory. PR has passed in the categories nicely as well and most of them if not all have some PR

3. Design: It has a unique design which for me it means that the owner has spend time and effort on this directory and it is not just one of the many directories that many people create now days promote them for a few weeks and then sell them to make a quick buck.

4. Category Structure: Very comprehensive category structure, really nicely done.

5. Traffic: The only way that I can assess traffic is Alexa stats which are quite inaccurate but at least they give me an idea of the traffic. According to Alexa DirSpace has a rank of 36,569 at the time I write this review which is really good. You may ask why do I care about traffic, the reason is simple traffic to a directory means clicks for the listed sites and this is one of the main reasons I submit to directories. I know that a lot of people submit just for PR and SEO reasons but traffic is equally important to me.

Conclusion: dirSpace is a very good directory and very reasonably priced and is a very good choice for anyone looking to spend some money in paid directory listings.