Root Dmoz.org Drops to PageRank 9

[creative craig]

Is it me or is the ODP a PR9, I been checking for past 20 minutes and it sticks at 9!

Craig

[cornwall]

>>That's when I personally wonder when I will decide to stop offering help and answers to ODP-related questions, and stick to other SEO topics/threads where the discussion gets less heated (or annoying)

I sincerely hope that you will not cease to offer a point of view here. It is interesting/useful/constructive from any senior ODP editor.

In fairness the discussions here rarely get heated, I guess "annoying" is sometimes nearer the truth. But annoyance is in the eye of the beholder, if one can disregard (difficult I know) the Luddite wings on the extremes of discussions, then just occasionally one can tease out good ideas.

As you say its off the topic, but I could add that may Google threads contain "predictable" inputs and predictable responses, but contributors continue to contribute ;)

[rfgdxm1]

>OK, if we're playing PR games with the ODP, here's another one. Find an editor of a top-level category with a profile page with a PR7 or PR8 and who *also* edits something deep down in the directory. Click on the deep-down-category and note the PageRank. Now compare it with another category at the SAME level, and you *should* see a PageRank boost for the first category. This is Google "passing" PageRank through the editor's profile page.

Interesting thought that I hadn't considered. PR should flow through the ODP via the editor profile page. As such, the above should be true.

[gethan]

The flowing of Pagerank through profiles is an interesting for another reason too...

The same benefit can be gained therefore by sites the editor is affiliated... Bookmarks (though they probably deserve it due to all the hard work they put in ;) ) - checking dmoz.org/robots.txt

# Please do not crawl us faster than 1 hit/second
#
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /editors/

All the profiles are under /profiles/ and bookmarks under /Bookmarks/ - not blocked - now whether they should be? This would be another case of the page rank algorithm affecting the structure of the web again.

The worst example of this is when an editor bookmarks a suspect site because of spamming etc... and inadvertantly gives the offending site a boost!

[rfgdxm1]

Can you stickymail a case where ODP editor bookmarks show up as ODP backlinks? I've never seen them appear on Google, and I had assumed that they just made a policy decision not to use these in the index. I do know for sure Google indexes editor profile pages. Just enter some ODP editor login names into Google and it is usually easy to find their editor profile page. As for any potential benefit an editor may get from publicly listing their affiliated sites, this is a damned if you do, damned if you don't case. For an ODP editor to make it publicly known what their affiliated sites are can be seen as good form. It is obviously easier for the public to check up if an editor is engaging in biased editing if they can know what the editor's affiliated sites are. If Google chooses to index bookmarks or editor profile pages, that is an issue to take up with Google, not the ODP. Any ODP editor who even publicly suggested that what Google does has the slightest effect on their editing would risk being launched from a cannon by a team of metas. ;)

[daroz]

I did some quick checking with some high-level editors (2-3 deep).

I could not find any of their bookmark pages in the google cache, and therefore not listed in any backlinks.

However, gethan does have a valid point. The PR for the pages I looked at were all PR5-6+ and many had few outbound links. The PR carried from those bookmark pages could be significant.

If the bookpark pages are used as a holding pen for questionable links, the possibility exists that the bookmark page may give an unintended boost to the page.

Admittedly, I didn't find an instance where it happens, but I also didn't see any META tags to stop Googlebot either. (And I didn't have a lot of time to look)

I think it would be resonable to add the bookmark pages to the robots.txt file. Afterall, the possibility does exist that these pages can use the dmoz PR to boost a site beyond the actual directory listing.

P.S. I'm talking about Googlebot crawling the pages, not the bookmarks being in the RDF.

[gethan]

rfgdxm1: You're right - there are no direct links from DMOZ bookmarks in the google index. Though that still would not indicate if PR flows through or not. PR calculations and the index seem to be distinct - differing update schedules and parts in the process.

There are many from the many mirrors though...

Related: alltheweb [alltheweb.com]

There is an SEO benefit to editors from listing affiliated sites in their bookmarks.

Apologies for taking this thread off at a tangent... although an interesting one :)

[added]Just spent some time on investigating PR and bookmarks... all at 5pr, bookmarks/letter/ are 6, and any subdirs within cats are 4... even expired editors. Which would be google's estimate... eating (some) words ;) ... google does treat DMOZ as slightly special - it doesn't use Bookmarks for PR calc... PR dosen't flow through Bookmarks[/added]

[edited by: gethan at 4:36 am (utc) on Mar. 14, 2003]

[JayC]

Well... back to the original topic, the decreased dmoz PageRank: with expired domains reportedly being "handled differently," and with many dmoz clones presumably being on expired domains (some probably recycled a few times), and with those clone directories each carrying a link back to dmoz, it seems likely that dmoz would be affected.

[Dynamoo]

The bookmarks at dmoz.org *aren't* spidered by Google, however they *are* included in the RDF dump so they *do* appear in some of the downstream portals, but typically with close-to-zero PR.

daroz:

If the bookpark pages are used as a holding pen for questionable links, the possibility exists that the bookmark page may give an unintended boost to the page.

Yes, even if just a small one. It also puts the editor "in the frame" if they're the one collecting the "questionable" sites. For this reason there's a reserved part of the directory that only the editors can see.. they can request a special holding area to be set up.

Oh yes, back to the original topic. dmoz.org dropped to PR9 a few months ago, but went back to 10 at the next update. The issue will be if the *internal* pages drop back in PR, but I've seen no evidence of this.

[theseeker]

The bookmarks at dmoz.org *aren't* spidered by Google, however they *are* included in the RDF dump

Actually, they aren't included in the RDF dump though they used to be quite some time ago. If you see Bookmarks on a downstream user's site, they are using a script to scrape dmoz.org

[steveb]

DMOZ bookmarks don't show up in search results, except as a result of being in the directories of sites who use a script to get DMOZ data.

newhoo.com bookmarks though are showing up in search results. They seem to have PR3.

[Napoleon]

>> Should be an 11, imho. <<

Yeh... I totally agree with that.

ODP to me is more than just a directory - it is part of the core of the web and of the early internet concepts. It is almost the heart and soul of the net itself.

There are lots of reasons I feel like that, and not only because it has been around for so long. Another is that so many people have put so much of themselves into it. Another is the concept... free to access, free to participate. Indeed, a bit like the web itself.

I guess these are what are sometimes called 'values'. Not monetry values, but human values.

From a different perspective - quality. I think most people would agree that it is the premier directory on the net. I certainly use it, way ahead of other acknowledged directories (eg: Yahoo). So do countless webmasters and others who actually know the net extremely well - it is a search facility of choice.

No, it isn't perfect. Neither is Google or any other structure on the web. But is is a truly outstanding resource, and a credit to all those who have built it (hats off to all of you).

It is well worthy, therefore, of PR10... and as NFFC states, even beyond.

[hutcheson]

>It is well worthy, therefore, of PR10... and as NFFC states, even beyond.

Maybe we should get a lawyer to sue Google for deprecation, if not defamation. I hear there's an Okie with the forms all ready to fill out (but, apparently, legal research an optional extra-cost item.)

Nah. We aren't worried about page rank. That's SE spider stuff (and Google does it VERY well, IMHO.) We worry about taxonomy and description -- things that humans do better. We're much more concerned about the effect the ODP has had on Google's search results than the effect Google has had on the ODP. (They are most welcome, and if anyone else wants a good link list to seed a search engine with, we have a special deal, this week only**: fresh up-to-date links, guaranteed <1% stale, complete with taxonomy and description.)

(**) Caveats:
-- Freshness nominally <1 week, but "sell-by" date on package overrides other claims.
-- Link rot ratio applies this week only. Other weeks it may vary, but has never been measured to be over 3%.