Re: TopSites-Us.com

From: Steve Werby <steve-lists_at_befriend.com>
Date: Mon 02 Dec 2002 17:47:12 -0600

"Jan Zimmerman" <info_at_watermelonweb.com> wrote:
> Is anyone familiar with http://topsites-us.com?
> Several of my clients have recently received requests to renew their
> "listings" at TopSites-us.com for $60/year/category though they don't
recall
> making an initial paid submission.

Short answer:

Their directory is low traffic, a paid listing is a poor value and they are
unethical.

Long answer:

They appear to exclusively base their directory on the freely available
directory data from the Open Directory Project at http://dmoz.org/. In case
you're not familiar with the Open Directory Project, it's a human edited
directory of several million sites used by at least a few hundred sites,
including Netscape, AOL and Google. More info at
http://dmoz.org/about.html. Your clients are likely receiving the requests
because topsites.us / topsites-us.com site has been emailing all contacts
associated with any site listed in the ODP. You can easily verify that your
clients' sites are listed there. So they're trying to scare you into
thinking they'll drop your listing from their directory while banking on the
assumption that the big numbers they throw around will lead you to believe
it's a high traffic site that can send many visitors to your site. Though
their site is a legitimate directory based on data from the ODP and they may
drop your listing if you don't pay, IMO there directory is very low traffic,
I can't justify spending $60 a year to maintain a listing and in any case I
feel that their unsolicited email is misleading and unethical. To be fair,
one of my sites did receive some visitors from topsites.us last month (14),
but to put it in perspective the site received several thousand visitors
from other directories that use the ODP data and 12,653 from the Yahoo
directory alone. It seems clear that topsites.us isn't a good value. Also,
though my topsites.us invoice of ~ 4 months ago remains unpaid the listing
is still active.

I hope that my insight is useful.

--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/






Received on Mon Dec 02 2002 - 17:47:12 CST