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Meanwhile, today I checked the Google directory. By very rough estimate, it accepted about 1000 entries yesterday - out of which 500 seemed to be commercial and about 300 were in entertainment section. Rest 200 multiplied by 365 equals about 70000 sites accepted over a year. While millions of junk sites are included either because of money, friends, or just being among the first.
Sorry, these directories should not be included in the search engine algos, in my view.
Meanwhile, today I checked the Google directory. By very rough estimate, it accepted about 1000 entries yesterday.
Please clarify as I am lost with the above?
Shak
Meanwhile, today I checked the Google directory. By very rough estimate, it accepted about 1000 entries yesterday - out of which 500 seemed to be commercial and about 300 were in entertainment section.
Nothing better than inventing numbers to prove a point, is there? Since the Google Directory isn't updated on a daily basis there's absolutely no way to break it down like that.
Sorry, I meant Yahoo and not Google. My fault. It should have read
DMOZ (and Yahoo...) should be scrapped.
Doesn't Google and Yahoo look similar. 2 o's. ;)
Yahoo lists all the sites it accepted daily and I looked up there to come up with the number 1000. Didn't count exactly though.
Again, it is YAHOOOO.
Still not sure what your beef is. If Yahoo accept 500 commercial sites a year (and they state quite openly that you can pay for a review, which does not guarantee entry into Yahoo directory) then that is just under 200,000 sites a year that are commercial
1. Nothing wrong with commercial sites. If I want to book a hotel or buy a bed I need a commercial site.
2. Even if this was wrong to have commercial sites then 200,000 added to Yahoo in a year is hardly "millions"
3."Sorry, these directories should not be included in the search engine algos, in my view. "
As far as I am aware they get no more weighting than a similar link from your cousins homepage of similar PR
:(
1. Nothing wrong with commercial sites. If I want to book a hotel or buy a bed I need a commercial site.
I agree. However, let me make my points clear.
1. When Yahoo accepts only 200 entries in general category (non-commercial and non-entertainment) for inclusion in its directory daily, it is accepting only about 70,000 sites annually which is perhaps a small percentage of new sites coming up and submitted. Long delay and high rejection rates arise from this which means if the search engines use the directory entires as a link (and many sites have this as their most important (and only) link) searching for relevant keywords is likely to result in more spam and missing out on quality newer sites which are not included.
2. Let's face it - all links are not created equal. An entry in a category of PR6 with about 100 entries will probably result in an instant PR3-PR4 bonus. All cousins and other relatives with their PRs of 0,1,2 - all linking to you, will probably result in PR3 at most. (PRs are logarithmic.) It means a popular site among many friends will lose out to a site which just got 'lucky' because of friends or otherwise and got included in Yahoo or DMOZ. When I said friends. I meant friends who are editors at these directories.
Of course, the editors of these directories, especially the non-commercial ones, have most likely their sites already included and they have no incentive to dilute their PR gain by accepting more site. Conflict of interest!
I could go on, but later. In short, I am making the point that let the internet community determine a site's value and directories like Yahoo and DMOZ (and Google) go against that concept.
Many thanks for your help. :)
If you have details of sites in the ODP that are no longer what the title and description say they are then please go to www.resource-zone.com and visit the Abuse Reporting forum - there is a specific thread there for reporting URLs with changed content and editors who will address your report quickly.
I have already done that. Till yesterday no one had replied to that but I saw that the category in question now has 12 entries as against 14 before I posted my message. Still some missing links exist.
However, editors have real lives too. This category was without an editor and perhaps this explains part of the reason. However, my belief is that there are tens of thousands of sites like this and some other method - like sunset clause where an entry expires within one or two years if the owner of the site does not renew it with the right password - might be steps in the right direction.
Thanks.
The best methods we have available are a) the automatic robot checker, b) editors visiting listed sites periodically to confirm their status and c) helpful web surfers like yourself who highlight the problem domains.
