All webmasters should be familiar with the Google Webmaster Guidelines. As webpronews points out, the Google Webmaster Guidelines use to state the following.

- Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

This statement has now been removed.

So much uproar had been given to this one simple statement. DMOZ had become a coveted directory which became very difficult to get into. DMOZ even got its own discussion forum where webmaster after webmaster would vent about the corruption of DMOZ as the webmaster could not get their site listed. Frankly, nobody would have cared about DMOZ without that statement in the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Now that this statement is gone, I am sure the cries of anger will be soon gone as well. After all, how could there be corruption in a free service maintained by unpaid moderators who do not make their presence known. Furthermore, who really uses DMOZ to go shopping anyways? Do people that are listed in DMOZ get a significant amount of referral traffic from the site? Since I was never able to get my sites listed in DMOZ, I may never know.

The Yahoo Directory was the real one in question. You could pay Yahoo $299 and get listed – well, that is if they accept you. That is a nice chunk of change for one incoming link. The question is whether or not it is worth it.

For my Tire Chain website, I decided to give it a try. The webpage that holds the tire chain companies had a whole two companies listed. Now it has three companies listed since Tire Chain Dealer is now on the list. The page of the tire chain sites has a Page Rank of 1.

Here are the results.

1. The Yahoo Directory Listing made no know impact on my organic listings.
2. I recieved some solicitations during the first few days as some internet marketing companies use the “New Listings” section to find leads.
3. Since removal from the “New Listings” section, I have recieved no referral traffic for about 6 straight weeks from the directory – and I am in season for tire chain sales.

My conclusion is that the Yahoo directory is not worth $300. Instead, consider spending your $300 getting a good press release written.