hutcheson - 12:22 am on Mar 17, 2004 (gmt 0)

Google is on record -- repeatedly -- as claiming that ODP links are not treated in any way specially as affecting page rank. That means all links in all dmoz.org pages (categories) are spidered and weighed just like links on yahoo.com or (geocities.com!) pages. It also means licensees that can be recognized as serving mirror pages won't show up in the search results. Of course, many licensees -- including directory.google.com -- can't be recognized as mirrors that way.

Obviously, Google's search results on many informational topics are lightyears beyond anyone else's, simply because the algorithm makes effective use of large hub sites like the ODP (and Yahoo). Also obviously, Google could do more with the ODP data: my guess is that Hilltop (or whatever it is) gains its main benefit on massively-spammed queries primarily by recognizing and heavily weighting links from non-incestuous hubs.