Building my first directory with Links SQL, and I'd like to start it with content from another directory. I'm not wild about DMOZ for several reasons: The directory structure (for my purposes) is poor, there are duplicative links, it's not very comprehensive, and I don't like the idea of paying lifelong tribute by including their footers forever ( http://www.dmoz.org/license.html ) .
There are some competing private directories with better structure as a starting point, with content that would be nice to legitimately purloin.
Obviously I want to stay legal - great little discussion on directory copyright law: http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html Using information in a directory and creating a new directory structure appears to give a wide berth of copyright infringement.
Questions:
1. If I am going to make a better directory with prune and graft operations and use directories as a source of content that I would manually edit one-by-on, what is the least arduous way of doing this? Grabbing/spidering content? Or no shortcuts, entirely manual operation?
2. In practical terms, is launching a directory with only a few, high page-rank entries per category a big disadvantage compared to one that is extensively populated?
3. Is it wise to block search engines from the directory site in robots.txt while encouraging people to list prior to launch, while accumulating a few incoming links? Or does a gradual growth work as well or better?
4. Spidering a competing directory and judiciously emailing those who are listed to ask them to take advantage of free listing on a new directory sounds effective but obviously could result in problems re spamming. It really depends on whether the recipient considers it spam or not. Anyone have experience with this?
There are some competing private directories with better structure as a starting point, with content that would be nice to legitimately purloin.
Obviously I want to stay legal - great little discussion on directory copyright law: http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html Using information in a directory and creating a new directory structure appears to give a wide berth of copyright infringement.
Questions:
1. If I am going to make a better directory with prune and graft operations and use directories as a source of content that I would manually edit one-by-on, what is the least arduous way of doing this? Grabbing/spidering content? Or no shortcuts, entirely manual operation?
2. In practical terms, is launching a directory with only a few, high page-rank entries per category a big disadvantage compared to one that is extensively populated?
3. Is it wise to block search engines from the directory site in robots.txt while encouraging people to list prior to launch, while accumulating a few incoming links? Or does a gradual growth work as well or better?
4. Spidering a competing directory and judiciously emailing those who are listed to ask them to take advantage of free listing on a new directory sounds effective but obviously could result in problems re spamming. It really depends on whether the recipient considers it spam or not. Anyone have experience with this?
Importing content - copyright & quality