Bidding Directories or a Giant Link Farm?

In 2007 a new innovation in the web directory industry saw the creation of "Bidding Directories" or "Bid for Position" directories. Many general directory owners quickly added a bidding directory to their portfolio in order to capitalize on the new trend.

In order to monetize their new web site they first had to market it and produce back links as well as traffic to attract potential bidders. What better place to start then, than the other bidding directories!

That though, is where the link farming may very well begin. A link farm is defined as being a group of web sites that link to each other, more specifically to every page within the individual web sites contained within the group.

Now lets take an example bidding directory and see where it leads us. We will start at the Xtreme Link Bidding directory. On the homepage the top 10 links are displayed which includes 3 other bidding directories.

- A1 Bid Links (http://www.a1bidlinks.com/) the homepage displays 5 top bids, of which 3 are links to other bidding directories.

- Ever Best Links (http://www.everbestlinks.com/) the homepage displays 5 top bids, of which 4 are links to other bidding directories.

- Text Link Bid Directory (http://www.textlinkbid.com/) the homepage displays 10 top bids, of which 4 are links to other bidding directories. One of which is also a link back to Xtreme Link Bidding.

The 5th link being displayed on Ever Best Links is to a bidding directory named Zorg Links (http://www.zorg-links.com/). This is actually one of the better bid for position directories. Not only is it being well promoted, but it also displays the number of listings in each category which is my reason for drawing your attention to it.

At the time of writing the Directories [Bidding] category contained 47 listings, which completely overshadows all of the other non directory related categories, with the closest being the Blogs category with 9 listings. If you browse over the categories you will see that a vast majority of them have fewer than 5 listings.

Whilst these directories do not link to every single page within another bidding directory, the group of sites is growing and there is the risk that they could be classified as a link farm.

Whether you visit a well promoted bidding directory or a new site on the block, you will be hard pressed to find one that does not contain at least 2 links on the homepage to other bidding directories.

Bidding directory owners should take note and start promoting their sites to attract bids from other niche sites lest the powers that be decide that this is indeed just a giant link farm.

I would even go as far as saying that if you are thinking of launching a bidding directory, avoid using bidding directories as a means of promotion.

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