Site-Sift dropped from Google

maaan... its tough to see another directory get dropped from the Google index but it's not too surprising upon inspecting Site-Sift.com. Of course there is public speculation as to why the site has been banned - Was it the "off topic" gambling links in the footer of each page? Was it the deliberate PageRank buy on the O'Reilly Network? Or was it a lack of unique content?

Odds are, it is not just one thing but a combination of factors that caused Site-Sift to be dropped. First off, I should say that I don't think G$ is deliberately targeting web directories. Instead they are more likely out to filter any website that is trying to profit from PageRank or manipulate Google's search results. I think the two contributing ingredients for Site-Sift's recipe for disaster were the PageRank buy and an overall lack of unique content.

Buying PageRank just doesn't make sense to me. If you have some money to spend, use it like you did before PageRank even existed - advertise on relevant pages and websites to get in front of your target audience. The only reason why I even have PR displayed in my toolbar is to see if a site is ranked at all.

The other downfall is something that I think is often overlooked when assessing a web directory - unique content. A directory's listings is its content. If directory listings are not unique, the directory is not unique. Site-Sift is said to be "human reviewed" - which would imply that the directory is unique. However, simply categorizing sites in a unique way is not enough. Human editors should list sites with updated and unique titles and descriptions. It's obvious that the titles of listings cannot always be "unique." I mean, if you are going list www.yahoo.com in a directory, the title is "Yahoo!" More importantly I think, is the uniqueness of the description. Human editors should create a unique description for every site listed. Otherwise, the directory is just another "scrapper" or "clone."

I checked how unique Site-Sift's listings were by performing an exact search (search with quotes) on over 10 listing descriptions. I found that all searches brought back a significant amount of matches - which clearly indicates that the listings are not unique. For example, an exact search on the description from the 1st listing in the Site-Sift Cooking category brings back 950 exact matches - #1 is dmoz.org/Home/Cooking/. Unfortunately for Site-Sift, there are many similar examples throughout the directory.