Does being indexed in directories hurt my Google and Alexa page rank?

Question

I have submitted my home page to something like 500 directories all on my own. It took me one non-stop week to achieve that. However, now it's the week after I have submitted my home page and it disappeared from Google search. However, all the other pages of my site are still present on Google search. In addition, now my ranking on Alexa is 1,500,000, while last week it was 1,300,000.

I launched this website on January 2008. Its address is http://www.outrenthome.com. Is there any prospect of getting my site at least among the first 200,000 in the Alexa ranking system?

Answer 1

Quite likley  .. they are getting wise to the 'directory' scam and 'punish' those who try to 'artificially' boost their search rankings ...

You need to get your site 'talked about' in the news groups and blogs ..

Answer 2

It depends. But for your case, it might have hurt you. The reason is that you submitted to 500 directories in just ten days. The search engines might view it as  form of trying to get links mainly for the purpose of getting links. It is much more recommended to submit around ten to twenty a week.

However, all is not lost. This is most probably a penalty of sort. Just continue slowly and your rankings will go up. Remember, the search engines are looking for quality content that their audiences are looking for. So your website will slowly make it's way up again.

I think you have to be realistic. Achieving a ranking of 200,000 in alexa is very very difficult. The alexa ranking is based on traffic. To make it into the top 200,000 you would need almost a thousand daily visitors. It purely depends on whether or not your website has that much demand. To do well in the Alexa rankings, you need to do well in the search engines first. They send you the traffic which increases your Alexa rankings.