Why does every list of directories have the same names on it?
Because the lists are copied from each other rather than compiled from scratch. Most trace back to sources written before 2012, when directories worked differently. The industry changed, nobody rechecked, and the same names have been passed along ever since. A directory appearing on forty lists shows it has been copied, which says little about whether it works.
Search for free directory submission sites, open a few of the results, and you will see the same names again and again. It is natural to read that as agreement, as though the directories everyone recommends must be the ones that work.
In practice it is one list, passed around.
If you are about to spend an afternoon submitting your site, that matters. Some of those names are fine. Some stopped accepting submissions years ago. Some will take your submission and file it on a page no search engine stores. On a list they all look the same, because a list of names tells you nothing about whether anyone checked them.
Once you understand how the copying works, you know which questions to ask instead, and the last section below covers them.
Where did these lists come from?
From a time when they were accurate. There was a period when submitting to directories really was a reasonable use of an afternoon: links from them counted, plenty of directories had real editors, and a list of the good ones was a useful thing to publish.
So people published them, and those lists were right when they were written.
Then everyone writing about the subject needed a list of their own. Building one from scratch means opening a hundred sites, testing a hundred submission forms and waiting weeks for approvals, while copying an existing list and rewording the introduction takes an afternoon. The economics only ever pointed one way.
Each copy inherited the entries of the one before, mistakes included, and added nothing new. That cycle has now been running for well over a decade.
What changed that the lists never picked up?
Around 2012 Google devalued large numbers of paid link directories. It was a clear, widely known event, and it ended directory submission as a link building tactic.
Directories reacted in different ways. Some closed. Some kept running with nobody reading submissions. Some stopped letting search engines index their own listing pages, which quietly makes every listing on them worthless while the site itself still looks healthy from outside. A few carried on properly and are still worth using today.
None of that reached the lists. A copied list has no way of learning that an entry has died, because nobody along the chain went back to look. So the same names passed through the change untouched, and much of the advice you find today describes a world that ended before some of its readers started their businesses.
Why these names in particular?
Two forces explain it, and neither of them is quality.
The first is history. Big old directories were on the original lists, so they are the ones that got passed along, and being on a 2011 list is their entire qualification.
The second is authority scores, which are easy to publish and easy to sort by. A directory that has existed for twenty years builds up a high score whether or not anything on it still works, so a list sorted by that number puts the oldest names at the top. It looks like a ranking, but it mostly measures age.
That is how some entries end up near the top of every list even though you can no longer submit to them, and nothing in the copying process would ever catch it.
What should you ask about a directory instead?
Five questions, and a copied list cannot answer any of them.
Is the listing page indexed? If search engines do not store the page your entry sits on, nothing else about the directory matters, and no authority score makes up for it.
What is the link attribute on a live listing? Read it from the actual page rather than from what the submission page claims.
Does a person review submissions? Instant publication means nobody does, which is why nothing on such a site counts.
Is it a website directory or a business listing site? A large share of every general list is the second kind, and those will reject a submission with no premises.
When did someone last confirm all of this? A list with no dates on it is a list nobody has revisited.
Each question takes a few minutes to check, which is why we publish our answers with the date we checked them, along with what we removed.
How to check this yourself
You can watch the copying happen for yourself in about thirty seconds. It is worth doing once, because you will read lists like these differently afterwards.
- Search Google for a phrase like free directory submission sites, and open any result that gives you a list.
- Pick a sentence from the middle of it. Skip the heading and the introduction and choose something descriptive from an entry partway down, ideally one with an unusual turn of phrase.
- Copy that sentence and search for it in Google wrapped in quotation marks. The quotation marks force an exact match, so you are asking who else has published this exact sentence.
- Count the results. The same sentence, word for word, on unrelated sites is the copying in plain view.
- Now try it with the entries instead of the wording. Take the fifth, tenth and fifteenth directory names on that list and search each one together with the phrase directory submission. The same names come back attached to different sites, in a similar order.
- Finally, turn this into something useful. Take the top three entries on that list and check each one: open it, find a real listing, and search `site:` followed by that listing page's address to see whether search engines hold it at all. On most lists, at least one of the top three fails.
Step six sums up the whole argument in one action. A name can appear on forty lists and still sit on pages nothing indexes, because being copied onto lists and being checked have nothing to do with each other.
What this does not mean
The names on those lists are not all bad. Some appear everywhere because they genuinely are the largest general directories and always have been. The trouble is that a copied list cannot tell you which ones those are, so it hands you the good and the dead in the same column.
Directory submission is not a waste of time either. The version described by unchecked advice is. A small number of maintained directories, checked before you spend the afternoon, is still a reasonable thing for a new site to do.
And a trustworthy list does not have to be short. It has to carry dates, and it has to be willing to say when something came off and why. A list that only ever grows is a list nobody is checking.
Questions people ask about this
How can I tell if a list has been checked?
Look for three things. Dates on individual entries, rather than one updated stamp at the top of the page. Some entries described unfavourably, because a list that recommends everything has not judged anything. And a record of removals, since a list that has never taken anything off has never been revisited.
Is a bigger list better?
Usually the opposite. Nobody could realistically check a list of three hundred entries, so the number is there for marketing rather than to describe the work. What you want to know is how many are worth your time, and on any careful reading that number is much smaller.
Why do so many lists sort by domain authority?
Because it is the one number available without doing any work, and it sorts neatly. It also mostly reflects how long a site has existed, so a list sorted by it is close to a list sorted by age. It tells you nothing about whether your listing will be indexed, which is what decides the outcome.
Are you not also just publishing a list?
Yes, and the checking is the only thing that makes ours different, so we publish the checking too. Every entry shows the date someone last looked at it and what kind of check that was, we say plainly when something is not worth your time, and we publish what we removed and why. If we ever stop doing that, everything on this page applies to us as well.