Best Of The Web (BOTW) is an old paid directory. In the 90s it used to be a network to rank websites which moved into paid directory business. In 2005-2006 amount of paid directories began to grow creating thousands paid directories which did not care who to approve as long money was paid. BOTW was the only directory providing fair services by rejecting websites with poor content. 

BOTW logos

 As example I can tell that in 2006 I was trying to submit my blog called MyWebHit and BOTW rejected my submission because I didn’t manage my blog enough. I was quite impressed that my submission was not approved and I respect BOTW decision a lot, moreover… blog I was trying to submit is no longer online and it gives extra credit to BOTW stuff who realized right away that I wasn’t serious about my old site. 

 During Pagerank update in October, 2007 Google punished most paid directories by decreasing Pagerank or bringing it down to Pagerank 0. BOTW was the only popular directory at this time which survived. Google strict policy about paid links helped BOTW to get rid from competitors and become a leader in directory industry.

  BOTW wasn’t punished by Google because:

• BOTW is the only directory which takes money not for submission but for labour they use to evaluate submitted website.
• BOTW approves only quality websites. 
• BOTW rejects all spammy websites with poor content.
• BOTW works to provide all benefits for quality submissions.
• BOTW has the best affiliate program. Company shares most profit with publishers. 
• BOTW is the best Business directory which share market with Business.com and Yahoo Directory.
• BOTW is the best organized paid directory.

 Back in a days I had a chance to talk with  Greg Hartnett who owns BOTW and here what he said:

2007 has been a banner year for us - our best year ever. Every month of 2007 was stronger than the previous month (if you’re judging by the amount of submissions coming in).

We continue to do what we do - provide users with relevant resources for their topic of interest. We will continue on our mission and let the chips fall where they may.

Regarding the Alexa rank - we must have seen a shift in our users over the last handful of months from a webmaster centric crowd to a more general internet user. I say that because even though our traffic numbers are up, our Alexa rank is moving the other way. Which leads me to believe that more and more of our visitors don’t have the Alexa toolbar installed

 Submission in BOTW could benefit business with high Pagerank link, extra traffic, and web visibility. Google and other search engines find new links on BOTW really fast and index them right away.

BOTW gang at NYC Web Marketing SES 2007 party. Picture source: Jim Boykin