I wanted to alert you today to a growing scam I've been seeing that involves web directories. We all know that a directory with a good pagerank is a great resource for a backlink. If we find a good directory with a high pagerank we are even willing to pay to have out site listed. After all, directory webmasters make their money from those who pay to have their sites as featured listings.

Lately, a lot of directories have been popping up that actually have useless pagerank, even though at the time it may seem high and legitimate. Unscrupulous webmasters are purchasing expired domains with already established pagerank and passing off the hard work as their own. This will only work for a brief time, so be careful and pay attention to the sites you are submitting to, or especially paying to submit to.

First off, look at the domain name. A good directory webmaster will try to have a domain name that explains what the site offers. If you see a directory with a name like "musicianpros" with a pagerank of 6, it's best to do your due diligence before submitting your site for inclusion. A site such as in this example is likely an old music site that expired and swooped up by a different webmaster. They quickly turn it into a directory and get others to pay for featured listings based on the pagerank. The problem is that once Google catches up with the changes the pagerank will drastically drop, and perhaps be penalized.

This is also something to be leary of for those of you involved in the purchasing and selling of websites. These same webmasters will try to sell these directories for high prices based on the pagerank, and the buyer will be very disappointed come the next PR update when their site drops off the scale.

A great way to ensure that the site is valid is by visiting the "wayback machine". Type that search string into Google and you'll find what is referred to as "The Internet Archive", where you can view what a site looked like with monthly pictures since it's inception. If the site has changed it's topic recently and changed ownership, you may want to think twice about any funds spent working with that site.

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