Google has recently started dropping many free directories out of their index. According to an article on SEO Roundtable, a high percentage of free directories are no longer showing results in Google. Now, don’t panic yet. It is believed that, rather than penalizing sites listed in these directories, Google will likely simply ignore these sites, and thus any links from them. So there, your past efforts aren’t going to come back and bite you. However, do be careful when submitting to directories in the future.
Check to see if Google has kept them in it’s index by typing the following into the google search bar – site:domain.com . If you receive a message saying “Your search – site:domain.com – did not match any documents” Google has removed the directory from it’s index. This will keep you from wasting your time getting links that “don’t exist”.
