A recent Business Wire press release has many speculating that the Business.com directory will be closing. Already many webmaster and SEO forums have lit up with activity in regards to this topic. Either its great link bait or true. With such a vague press release, it’s really hard to tell what their plans truly are.

Let’s be realistic. Business.com had a lot of dead listings in its directory. For quite some time the neglect became ever more apparent. This is the main reason why I refused to list sites there. Those dead listings are a drag on the domain authority or at least the pages where the listings are at. And the dead listings were all over.

Like some directories, an excessively high listing fee is a hard sell to other businesses and SEO professionals in the present economy. $299 per year is very costly for smaller enterprises and pretty much prices them right out of the market. And the current market will not support many listings for $299 a year.

Whether business.com closes or just takes on a new appearance is still open to debate. Regardless, it is an interesting event in an industry with tens of thousands of directories competing for a relatively small pool of businesses that are spending money on directory listings.

In recent weeks there have been many smaller directories shutting their doors. The economic climate simply can not support the number of directories in existence, especially when many have been poorly maintained. If Business.com closes, it will add to a growing number of casualties witnessed in these uncertain financial times.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 13th, 2010 at 12:09 am and is filed under Link Building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.