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Troubleshooting page with over 100 links

Involves using small category of ODP

         

Psycho1

9:00 pm on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



My site covers a topic that has it's own small category in the ODP. I thought it would be a benefit to my users to have a copy of the ODP category on my site. I simply used a website downloader to download the specific category/subcategories I wanted, but all links pointing to other parts of the DMOZ are still in tact, which I'd like to keep but it's increasing the links on the page to well over 100. What would be the easiest way for me to stop Google from seeing all of these external links to the listed sites in the ODP and some of the links to other parts of the open directory project? Thanks in advance.

allanp73

9:26 pm on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Why do this? Just link to the dmoz category directory. One link it is much easier. There is no benefit for you or your user to have all of the links from the category. It will drain your pr and clutter your site.
I would strongly recommend one link to the DMOZ category using a target=blank so you don't lose your users.

rogerd

9:41 pm on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member



Psycho, you can create a separate page for your links and, if you don't want it spidered you can put in a ROBOTS meta tag and/or use your robots.txt file.

Psycho1

10:34 pm on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I've seen quite a few sites add all or parts of the ODP to their sites, and I just thought I'd provide a resource for my users to find more information about the topic my website covers. I could just link to them, but their servers have been bogged down and very slooow. I would want this part of my site indexed to bring in some visitors from search engines, but the only problem I see is the fact that it will drain my PR with all these links. That's part of my reason for fooling Google into not being able to follow these external links, therefore keeping my PR but still getting this data indexed. Make sense?

Psycho1

10:42 pm on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Also, if I put "index, no follow" in my robots meta tag, that would stop Google or any other search engine from finding/crawling the subcategories which I would want indexed as well.

MeditationMan

1:58 am on Mar 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I just thought I'd provide a resource for my users to find more information about the topic my website covers.

Hi Psycho,

You'd be providing a service if you picked what you thought were the very best of those 100 sites and only linked to them. I never feel I'm being given very good service when I'm presented with a large, undigested (and undigestible) collection of links. Show them you know what you're talking about by giving a short review of each of the selected links. That way you'll also have content that is useful for people and spiders.

And IMVHO PR drain is vastly overrated. Linking to other authoritative sites from my index page hasn't harmed me at all. In fact I think it's helped in terms of establishing my site as a hub.

hutcheson

10:07 pm on Mar 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>And IMVHO PR drain is vastly overrated. Linking to other authoritative sites from my index page hasn't harmed me at all. In fact I think it's helped in terms of establishing my site as a hub.

I'll pass on the humility, but I will take a piece of that opinion, which strikes me as very sensible. Google is _not_ the only game in town; there are algorithms that place extra weight on hubs -- not to mention that an authoritative hub is going to have an easier time getting disinterested links from other webmasters.

To the original question: there are several ways you can copy the ODP data to your site. But if you aren't adding "value" to the listings, why not just link to the directory.google.com version?