How to put together a directory

[royemunson]

Hello all,

Quick question for those of you who have done this.

I would like to put together a directory whether it be of businesses,
hotels, etc... and put this info together quickly.

I thought of using a scraper but am having trouble finding one.

Any thoughts on the steps of how to do this.

an example would be a hotel directory with images, description,
reviews, etc...

or real estate listings.

I know there's a way to do this but not sure how.

Thanks,

Joe

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

You can buy a data list from InfoUSA or ACXIOM and use this as your base. When I had new competitors start-up, they always pulled generic data from these sources.

The other alternative is to outsource the coding of a script the scraps the data. That shouldn't be too expensive.

 

[MattThomas]

Belonging to a directory is never bad for SEO, since it is considered a backlink. Why not offer businesses or hotels one free year to be listed on your directory, just to get your name out, then they might want to continue paying you since they have a benefit of a backlink.

If you want to do it this way, you might have to do it manually since you'd have to contact each business.

 

[mtnman]

If you give a bit more detail on your intent, I may be able to suggest some other things and optional ideas. Specifically nationally vs. locally.

Do you have access to the speedway?

I have been meaning to write up a post in there about a model I'm doing anyway, could add to what you were thinking.

 

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[royemunson]

For instance. Say I have a travel website on Florida travel. It has lots
of content and articles.

I would like to quickly add hotel listings, reviews, etc...
to do just that - gain more listings/advertising revenue eventually, not
to mention keep people on my site instead of sending them elsewhere.

Trying to think of ways to not rely as much on affiliate programs
and generate more ad dollars.

I'd heard this work well for localized business directories where folks
used a scraper (I had one but can't find the darn thing) to pull in listings,
then sell premium space.

Hope that adds detail - thanks for the replies.

JOe

 

[Jonleehacker]

There are people on elance or forums like WarriorForum or Digitalpoint that can easily scrape that stuff from the YellowPages.com

I use this app ( Data Extractor, Screen scrape email, URLs and More ), with a custom piece of Javascript to harvest questions when I'm doing market research for example.

 

[mtnman]

Oddity Software - Data, Design and Development Services

Yellowpages Scraper - Scrape directory listings from yellowpages.com

YP tos looks something like this, so get acquainted with that before hand. lol

Accordingly, You may view, use, copy, and distribute the Materials found on YELLOWPAGES.COM Web sites for internal, noncommercial, informational purposes only. You are prohibited from data mining, scraping, crawling, or using any process or processes that send automated queries to the YELLOWPAGES.COM Web site. You may not use the YELLOWPAGES.COM Web sites to compile a collection of listings, including a competing listing product or service. You may not use the Site or any Materials for any unsolicited commercial e-mail. Except as authorized in this paragraph, you are not being granted a license under any copyright, trademark, patent or other intellectual property right in the Materials or the products, services, processes or technology described therein. All such rights are retained by YELLOWPAGES.COM, its subsidiaries, parent companies, and/or any third party owner of such rights

 

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[royemunson]

Jonlee you must be a member of the warrior forum private area -
I forgot I had access to that and have downloaded it for FREE!!!

Thanks

Joe

 

[lincolnave]

Hey mtnman,

Thanks for the mention. I have owned ypscraper for a few months now.

I'm also creating a directory creation service.FYI

If anybody has any question please PM me.

 

[MattThomas]

Maybe I'm a bit ignorant in this area, but wouldn't scraping and subsequently copying the content of other's sites be very bad for SEO? Wouldn't this be counter productive to what you want to do? You'd want to rank highly so webmasters would want to take advantage of that usability by being listed on your site.

Even if you are looking to get revenue elsewhere, other than paid listings in your directory, wouldn't poor SEO hurt your traffic and thus, hurt your revenues anyway?

 

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[Jonleehacker]

Jonlee you must be a member of the warrior forum private area -
I forgot I had access to that and have downloaded it for FREE!!!

Thanks

Joe

you got it

 

[LightHouse]

Maybe I'm a bit ignorant in this area, but wouldn't scraping and subsequently copying the content of other's sites be very bad for SEO? Wouldn't this be counter productive to what you want to do? You'd want to rank highly so webmasters would want to take advantage of that usability by being listed on your site.

Even if you are looking to get revenue elsewhere, other than paid listings in your directory, wouldn't poor SEO hurt your traffic and thus, hurt your revenues anyway?

There is no way to get around having dub content with contact info without it being wrong. If you are making a directory the contact info you are scraping isnt going to bring in traffic. because when you put that info in google maps or whichever will always be first. That contact info is just value, the traffic will come from keywords surrounded by the directories specialized intent.

If i were building a sterling pizza place directory my traffic wouldnt come from

dominoes sterling number

because google maps and directory will bring that up.

____________________________________________________________

It will come from things like:

best pizza shops in sterling

or

sterling pizza shop reviews, where can i get good pizza in sterling....

So it wont matter much.

 

[MattThomas]

There is no way to get around having dub content with contact info without it being wrong. If you are making a directory the contact info you are scraping isnt going to bring in traffic. because when you put that info in google maps or whichever will always be first. That contact info is just value, the traffic will come from keywords surrounded by the directories specialized intent.

If i were building a sterling pizza place directory my traffic wouldnt come from

dominoes sterling number

because google maps and directory will bring that up.

____________________________________________________________

It will come from things like:

best pizza shops in sterling

or

sterling pizza shop reviews, where can i get good pizza in sterling....

So it wont matter much.

Good point. Thanks for clarifying. :eusa_clap:

 

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[Jonleehacker]

It's possible to out-rank the yellow pages even using their exact content.

If you are focused on a very specific region and topic, and have your site well structured and your internal linking setup properly, you can be (in Google's eyes) a better resource due to your clarity and focus on a smaller topic.

IMHO the yellow pages is where Google sends traffic when it doesn't have anywhere better to recommend.

 

[mtnman]

IMHO the yellow pages is where Google sends traffic when it doesn't have anywhere better to recommend.

Ditto! 100% accurate.

 

[kbratt100]

Belonging to a directory is never bad for SEO, since it is considered a backlink. Why not offer businesses or hotels one free year to be listed on your directory, just to get your name out, then they might want to continue paying you since they have a benefit of a backlink.

If you want to do it this way, you might have to do it manually since you'd have to contact each business.

Hey man you still on long island?

 

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