The Yahoo Directory, one of the earliest and most reputed online directories, is being “put to death” by Yahoo by the end of this year, according to a post by Jay Rossiter, SVP, Cloud Platform Group at the company. The announcement was rather inconspicuous, considering that this directory was at the forefront of the evolution of the Internet and how users found information. Infact, Yahoo started out as a directory and its name is the acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”.

The Yahoo Directory had lost most of its appeal to SEO professionals over the past few years with successive algorithm updates by Google progressively devaluing links from directories, including ones like Yahoo that did have an editorial control on the quality of websites that got added to the directory. However, the annual listing fees of over $200 certainly did not seem justifiable for marketers considering both the declining link value as well as the lowering popularity and usage of Yahoo as a search engine.

There was no statement from Yahoo regarding refund of amounts for websites that have already been charged a full-year’s listing fees. We suspect that Yahoo might consider offering pro-rated online advertising credits instead of refunding the money paid by those listing in the directory.

The general directory model seems to certainly be coming to its end, with Microsoft’s bCentral directory having already been shut down several years ago. There are a couple of large directories with significant annual listing fees, such as Business.com and BOTW.com; however, it remains to be seen how long these sites can continue to operate a business model based on directory listing fees.

- The NetMarketer Editorial Bureau