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how does dmoz view adsense?
Nick
I'm not sure why would they care either way though. Commercial sites are allowed in dmoz.
TJ
Nick
The summary is, that the ODP does not care about advertising on a site with sufficient unique content, but does not want to list sites which have the primary intention to earn money.
[If this was not clear - please look at John_Caius's post below for an explanation :) ]
[edited by: windharp at 5:51 pm (utc) on Sep. 10, 2003]
Sites consisting primarily of affiliate links, or whose sole purpose is to drive user traffic to another site for the purpose of commission sales, provide no unique content and are not appropriate for inclusion in the directory. However, a site that contains affiliate links in addition to other content (such as a fan site for a singer that has interviews and photos plus banner ads and links to buy the singer's CDs) might be an acceptable submission to the directory.[url=http://#]General rule of thumb:[/url]
Look at the content on the site, mentally blocking out all affiliate links. If the remaining information is original and valuable informational content that contributes something unique to the category's subject, the site may be a good candidate for the ODP. If the remaining content is poor, minimal, or copied from some other site, then the site is not a good candidate for the ODP.
[edited by: choster at 3:34 pm (utc) on Sep. 10, 2003]
An affiliate link is one where the publisher gets a cut of sales made on the target site by the person who clicked through. There is therefore some kind of tracking URL for the user browsing through.
Adsense is a pay per click revenue method, not pay per sale.
The difference is that with an affiliate link, site A is set up to drive traffic to site B. From a unique content point of view, there's no point having site A in dmoz if site B is already listed. With Adsense, site A provides content and happens to link to sites B, C, D, E through to Z+++, based on the content of site A. Site A is therefore not set up to drive traffic to a second specific site.
Hence a site with Adsense is not excluded from dmoz, if it has sufficient unique content to deserve a listing. Sometimes you come across non-affiliate sites that are little more than popup heaven and these are commonly deleted. A site with affiliate links is not excluded either, but it is generally the case that affiliate sites don't have significant amounts of unique content - www.i-want-you-to-book-your-hotel-through-my-site.com is a typical example.
[edited by: John_Caius at 3:36 pm (utc) on Sep. 10, 2003]
does not want to list sites which have the primary intention to earn money
I think what windharp means is 'does not want to list sites which are built solely to earn money through driving traffic to other sites'.
:)
Nick
If the other stuff on the site is unique, valuable and enlightening, then it will probably get listed regardless of whether there is Adsense, a banner ad or a picture of your grandmother's wombat in the top righthand corner.
If, for example, it's derivative rewritten tosh taken from the CIA World Factbook with pictures stolen from the Google image search, then it probably won't.
We have a standard policy that we apply to all ads, whether PPC, PFI, free, banner exchange, or commission: we ignore them (if we can--if we can't, we can the site) and look at the CONTENT on the site. If THAT'S worth listing, then we list despite the ads. Most editors probably consider the annoyance value -- egregious sustained annoyances like, say, two popups and a popunder -- and we don't need any more reason to reject.
But we differentiate between sites that are "primarily to push their affiliates" (using that in the most general way), and sites that "have some ad banners with their content.
Most users, of course, hate ad banners. But in context ... I'm in the process of scanning a hardback book of somewhat limited popular interest, printed in the mid-nineteenth century. Almost 1/3 of the pages in that book consist of the publisher's current catalog....
Calm down....
Nick
I was actually just thinking how refreshing and professional (as in the description of this site) a couple of the threads in the directory forums had been lately.
