Goguides are asking for money after years of silence

goguides-spam-free-logoThis is weird. Email just received:

From: [email protected]

Date Submitted: 2/9/2008

Your website is due for a yearly review. All listings aging over twelve months in GoGuides require a yearly human review to maintain trust in our system. When you renew your listing we remove the nofollow tag/ attached to your listing for one year. You’re then eligible to add *50 deeplinks for that listing in GoGuides Search. Staff will contact you with more information about submitting your deeplinks via spreadsheet after payment. Please allow 48 hours for processing. To renew this listing for one year and gain additional search exposure please click this link: ….

First I have heard from them since I added a website to their directory 7 years ago. They have never asked for money since then.

I guess this will at least guarantee one visitor from their directory …. not sure it is worth $69.95 though! I’ll stick with AdWords 😉

I checked Analytics, and GoGuides have sent me 6 visitors in the last 6 years – although Google Analytics cannot tell me anything about where these visits came from, so they might not have even been real people!

Anyway, isn’t charging people to remove the nofollow tag against Google’s webmaster quality guidelines? I wonder how many small businesses even have 50 deep links – most small business websites have about 10 core pages, plus some fluff and blog posts about the 2008 office Christmas party.