Forum Moderators: open
I don't know but it seems very much like an abuse of the page rank system.
Why should Google have any control over what someone puts on their profile page on DMOZ?
were you just wondering?
or was it 1 of the following reasons:
Your competitor is a dmoz editor?
You would like to be a dmoz editor?
Shak
# Please do not crawl us faster than 1 hit/second
#
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /editors/
Its probably pretty much open, but one of the ODP folks can probably provide more insight. If an editor likes your site, maybe they'll put a link to it from their profile. Never hurts to ask.
As for
fyi, [dmoz.org...]
# Please do not crawl us faster than 1 hit/second
#
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /editors/
[dmoz.org...] is the format of the editor pages url, so it is not banned by the robots file.
It doesn't actually say it has to be the editor's personal homepage, but I think that is understood.
So, skibum, I think editors renting out that link, even as a favor, would be frowned upon.
And, yes it is one route to getting a high PageRank for your personal homepage: work very hard at improving the ODP, become the editor of many categories, and that link may pass a high PR to your personal homepage.
If ya see someone who edits in modern literature with links to viagra and diet pill sites with a few lawfirms tossed in on the page, seems like that might be considered a little over the top.
And if someone has a cousin with a personal site where the homepage has a PR of 7, and asks his cousin as a favor to add a link to his totally unrelated site solely to boost his Google rankings, this is fair? In such cases getting high PR isn't a matter of the content of your site, but just who you know. Google PR in many ways is unfair. Such is the way Google works.
>Why should Google have any control over what someone puts on their profile page on DMOZ?
Google has 100% control on whether they want to count links in ODP editor profiles. Google has decided to do so. If someone doesn't like this, then they should complain to Google. As for the ODP, editors listing their sites in their profile can be seen as a good thing. If the whole world knows which sites are theirs, this makes it much more difficult for them to get away with biased editing.
I am not a web designer, in fact I am really bad with html. The editor of my category is a web designer, no conflict of interest there. But the web design category of our region has such pathetic low page rank.
So that editor has a link to his own website from his profile and ultimate he got a high page rank. He then has links from his high page rank website to his clients thus passing on the page rank to them. Isn't this a advantage from a commercial point of view?
"Hey, I can do design for your website plus I can guarantee you a listing in google and dmoz. Given all aspect of your web being equal with your competition, I can assure you that you will be listed higher on these search engines."
Hey, I can do design for your website plus I can guarantee you a listing in google and dmoz....
If you have evidence this is happening, it may be an abuse by the editor which you should report via the usual channels.
If you are just commenting that altruistic action by the editor in helping to build the OPD has an unexpected spin-off benefit in giving them PageRank for their personal homepage, then treat it as a wake-up call.
Altruistic actions do benefit all parties, including the initiator. There are plenty of other such altruistic actions available to webmasters. Consider altruism as one of the almost forgotten secrets of SEO.
Looks like you didn't understand message #4 in this thread. That's a verbatim copy of the DMOZ robots.txt file, and it says that conforming robots may not spider the editor profile pages. Since Googlebot respects robots.txt, there's no way that the link you're talking about and the PageRank of the respective page on Google have *anything* to do with each other.
You're clearly barking up the wrong tree here.
As Imaster says, DMOZ editor profile are under /profiles/ not /editors/
There's no barking here, just voicing out what I think could be an area that could be abused.
Webmasters know how much hard work is involved to get a measly PR4 or PR5. Whether the editor deserve that link for the thankless job (done probably once every 2-3 months) is really up to individual to judge.
If you think getting a PR4 or PR5 involves a lot of hard work, then you are laboring very inefficiently. I've seen lots of teenagers with personal pages that are PR4 and PR5. Why bother being an ODP editor when you could get a PR4-5 just by asking a few teenagers for links?
The ODP has no relationship to Google. The data is available for anyone to use. That's what is meant by Open Source.
Let's say there is an editor in a PR5 cat with 50 links (including the overhead ones). The transfer to the profile page of that editor is PR5/50.
If that was the only category that editor was involved in, assuming 4 more links (3 internal and 1 category link) on the profile page, besides the home page link, the transfer is (PR5/50)/5 = PR5/250. My guess is it will be somewhere in the PR2-PR3 range.
Effect of Adding More Categories
Assume one became editor of 250 similar categories as above - i.e. PR5 categories with 50 links each. From each of those categories, PR5/50 will be transferred. Therefore, we have PR5/50 * 250 = PR5 * 5 transfer.
However, since each of these categories will be listed as a link on the profile page, the home page link has to share the bounty with 253 other links, and the transfer to the home page will be PR5 * 5 / 254 = about PR5 / 50.
That is, gain is only 5 fold. Any additional similar category will add only very small amount and the maximum PR transfer will be PR5/50 in total.
Effect of Unequal Categories
I will not show the calculations but the highest PR/#links will dominate and most other links will tend to dilute the PR transfer, since each category gets a link on the profile page.
Ideal Strategy
Become editor of about 5 PR8 categories. Don't add any new sites (besides yours) since more links tend to dilute the PR transfer to one's home page. Do one edit every four months. Use that edit to remove your competitor's sites. ;)
The page rank gets passed back from the directory the editor is responsible for. I have overlooked that and has assumed that as long as one is an editor, they get high page rank profile page.
It is just an isolate case of a high profile editor who has passed on page rank to his site.
But the PageRank is applied by Google, it's nothing to do with the ODP and frankly the way editors are listed is perfectly logical.
If you want to get picky about it, consider that PageRank passes *through* the editor page to the other categories within the directory, effectively creating a PageRank shortcut. If you have a senior editor with a high-PR page, that will boost the other categories that editor edits in. So, potentially a senior editor who also edits in their hometown will also give their local businesses a PageRank boost over their competitors. Fair? Unfair? That's just how PageRank works. Blame Google.
As for what search engines do with profiles: actually, editors complain MUCH more often that their profiles are found on sites of ODP licensees that they DON'T approve of: such as porn directories that don't bother to strip out the non-adult listings.
Also, I checked out many editors' profile pages and found that, at least in the categories I am interested in, many of them don't have links to any sites, and the ones who link are linking to their non-commercial sites.
Dynamoo
I was joking about getting PR8 cats. ;)
