Different Varieties of Hungarian Link Directories
Hungarian link directories can be split into two large groups by their setup and by the logic they use: the first group consists of startpagina-clones and the second group consists of traditional link catalogues.
Startpagina-clone Pages
The format comes from The Netherlands, the initial page is accessible at the webaddress startpagina.nl. Several lookalikes exist in the Benelux countries, however besides that this type of catalogues is only present substantially in Hungary, and, thanks to its huge success in Hungary, Hungarian webmasters are trying out similar pages in a few other language areas.
The main secret of this genre's success is that it successfully abandoned the major shortcomings of the conventional web directories, but the professional backup provided by the large media group Sanoma also took part in the evolution of the lap.hu pages, the most popular startpagina-clone.
Contrary to the traditional, hierarchically-built directories, like the Open Directory Project the startpagina clones didn't create a huge, extremely complex system but are built up from several thousands of nicely separated units, whose biggest organizing force is the particular keyword which defines the subject of the assembled links. These single page web directories, found usually on separate subdomains are only listing links corresponding to the topic stated in their name (and also in their subdomain). As per usual the maintenance of each different page is performed by different editors who's familiar with the subject in particular and not by the keeper of the catalogue system. Thus the submission of links, approval and maintenance is not regulated centrally but independently at that very page.
Conventional Web Catalogues
While the creation of a link directory similar to the lap.hu pages asks to some major development, to create aold-fashioned web directory you only need to choose (or maybe translate to Hungarian) a suitable content management system or catalogue script. Thanks to this and to the relative immaturity of the Hungarian web culture general link directories began to proliferate in the year 2010. The most prevalent catalogue script highly among all is the PHP Link Directory; besides this additional directories are employing the eSyndicat, indexU systems.
Further versions based on the Drupal and Wordpress systems are also highly popular. They present the submitted pages in a form akin to a linkblog which practice is almost unknown in other countries. These web catalogues are more similar to the social bookmarking-style pages than a catalogue built on hierarchical topics.
It's more or less a Hungarian peculiarity that several catalogue owners only accept unique description for submission. Catalogues requiring descriptions which couldn't be found anywhere else were earlier found in similar numbers only in German-speaking areas. The appearance of the aforementioned and similar strict rules indicates that more and more administrators realize that the operation of free link directories is not necessarily paying off. Non-free directories are scarce because the Hungarian market can't pay for the upkeep of these.
Though the popularity of the link directories is fading away on the international web, in Hungary although a bit late the genre is at its heyday: on one hand the lap.hu pages are considered to be among the most popular Hungarian pages, moreover lots of conventional link catalogues emerged recently, on the other hand different link catalogues are (still) considered as highly useful tools in search engine optimizing and gaining more visitors for Hungarian language pages. This is the reason why web directory submissions are still vital part of
Hungarian Online Marketing.
