Brownbook

Brownbook is an enormous online business directory claiming to contain approximately 44.6 million businesses. Listings are entirely free, and its domain rating of 79 makes it one of the most authoritative directory domains we have tested.

What’s included? ¶

Brownbook functions more like a giant international phone book than a specialist software directory. A submitted business receives a directory page containing its contact, location and online information.

A listing can include:

• Business name and category
• Full postal address
• Telephone, mobile and fax numbers
• Email address
• Website and blog links
• Social media profiles
• Business tags
• Location tags
• A backlink to the submitted website

Brownbook is very much a phone book and has all the possible fields available for a registered business & location. It is less specifically relevant to SaaS products than an established software directory, but its strong domain rating creates an obvious SEO attraction.

What do you need to supply? ¶

The form takes only a few minutes to complete. Once submitted, the business enters Brownbook’s main directory alongside millions of other listings.

Results ¶

Truly Analytics was submitted to Brownbook using its free listing option which is the only option.

The listing exists within the directory and provides a backlink opportunity. However, it had not been discovered through either DuckDuckGo or Brave when checked.

First Party Attribution also recorded no traffic from brownbook.net:

No measurable referral traffic reached Truly Analytics from Brownbook during the reviewed period.

Brownbook had a domain rating of 79 when checked. That is extremely high compared with most of the directories reviewed and makes a free listing initially appear very attractive.

The problem is scale. Brownbook claims to contain approximately 44.6 million businesses, with new listings appearing every other minute. A newly submitted page is buried beneath an enormous volume of existing and incoming content.

Being listed on a powerful domain does not mean that the listing page will be crawled or indexed. At the time of review, we had no evidence that search engines had discovered the Truly Analytics page or its backlink. With literally millions of pages to crawl there’s no guarantee that it’ll ever be found.

Final verdict ¶

A few minutes as a free backlink gamble. Expect nothing.

Brownbook is unusual among free directories because the underlying domain is genuinely strong. A domain rating of 79 is far higher than most of the small, generated directories competing for business submissions. It’s higher than some serious newspapers and other publications out there.

The listing is free and quick to complete. Spending a few minutes to obtain a business page and possible backlink is a defensible gamble.

However, the practical results are nonexistent. The Truly Analytics listing had not been found through Google or Brave, and Truly Analytics recorded no events from brownbook.net.

Brownbook’s sheer size is probably its greatest weakness for new submissions. With approximately 44.6 million businesses and new entries appearing constantly, there is little reason for crawlers or genuine users to reach one particular listing. The authority of the root domain does not automatically transfer meaningful SEO value to every deeply buried page.

Overall I don’t understand the site - there’s no clear explanation as to why the domain ranking is so high, what the value is from the site owners, why it is available to do what it does. It’s a strange anomaly out there on the internet.

Truly Analytics ¶

Truly Analytics established that the Brownbook listing generated no measurable referral activity during the reviewed period.

First Party Attribution distinguishes between obtaining a directory page and receiving genuine value from it. In this case, the listing existed, but there was no detected search-engine discovery or attributed traffic.

Truly Analytics helps organisations understand who is visiting their website, what their real traffic looks like, where it came from, and which marketing and sales activity delivers genuine value.