Does dmoz listing help

Very strange thing!

[shady]

I had been waiting, patiently, for over a year for my dmoz listing to be approved. Eventually, managed to contact a dmoz editor, who seemed quite perplexed as to why I had contacted him! I mentioned that he was the editor of the category :)

Anyway, my site has had pretty good rankings for around 1 year now, but never made it quite to the top! I couldn't wait for the dmoz link/google dir links to take effect......

Instantly they did, my site vanished :-( and now it is not listed in the first 400 sites in a UK sites only search (yes it is a .co.uk). I am disappointed to say the least!

I am assuming this is a complete coincidence, unless anybody else has had a similar experience!

[kctipton]

Complete coincidence.

[Mark_A]

in many areas I look at, dmoz links are not being shown by google as inward links at this point in time.

One competing site had 350 genuine 3rd party inward links pre update and is presently only showing 35 in www.google

I would not worry about the dmoz link, it will either bring traffic or it will not. Also for yahoo, business.com etc etc

There are 12 months in every year.

[hutcheson]

You shouldn't expect an immediate large effect: most ODP directory pages have fairly low page rank. But for months it will keep having small positive effects. Whether it ever gets large enough to be significant, or even to be visible, depends on other factors (some beyond either your control or ours.)

I don't know any possible scenario where an ODP listing HURTS a site. We have had some people complaining that their sites were in what they considered pejorative categories, or had unflattering descriptions. Even that won't hurt search results, since SEs take neither of those into account.

[rfgdxm1]

An ODP listing should never hurt a site. However, they may feel that they should be listed in [dmoz.org...] when instead they get listed several categories deep. Typically, the higher up the tree a site is listed, the better for Google rankings.

[BradBristol]

shady, I could have told that exact same story for one site I manage. And we are not alone, there have been numerous reports all saying the same thing in the florida update thread and in other forums.

A coincidence, could be, but with the number of people reporting the same thing, I doubt it.

More like a google screwup, or maybe google thinks any new site in the ODP is evil...

[BradBristol]

shady is your site listed in the google directory?

I am betting it's not....

[rfgdxm1]

>A coincidence, could be, but with the number of people reporting the same thing, I doubt it.

Correlation does not prove causation. There are a huge number of sites listed in the ODP still in Google. Webmasterworld is an example.

[IITian]

shady,

Even though it is unlikely but I won't rule out that DMOZ listing did hurt your ranking.

All we know is that a DMOZ listing will help increase the PR of a page (site) under Google's original concept and most likely even now.

However, PR is just one of the factors influencing the rankings. Keyword relevancy is another, and the extra link from DMOZ could have either kicked off some filter or diluted the relevance for that particular keyword/keyphrase.

Keyword Filter: On the Google News board many discussion have centered around whether Google penalizes for overoptimization especially in the anchor text field. Let's say you had 9 links, all with the anchor text keyword and the new link from DMOZ has the same anchor text. It might activiate an overoptimization filter, and send you site down in the serps.

Keyword Relevance: Imagine a situation just like before except that the DMOZ link has keyword blah blah blah as the anchor text and this results in Google determining that now the external relevance factor for that keyword is down to, say 30% only, thus pushing the page down.

[2oddSox]

More like a google screwup, or maybe google thinks any new site in the ODP is evil...

I don't think so. I had a site (finally!) included about 3 weeks ago, and it actually went up nicely in the rankings post-Florida.

2odd...

[BradBristol]

rfgdxm1 wrote

Correlation does not prove causation. There are a huge number of sites listed in the ODP still in Google. Webmasterworld is an example.

I believe we are talking about sites that have been just added to the ODP.

2oddSox, is your newly added site listed in the google directory?

[2oddSox]

BradBristol,

No, it's not in the G directory yet.

2odd...

[shady]

It might activiate an overoptimization filter, and send you site down in the serps

Thanks IITian

Since starting this thread, it has occurred to me that this has to be the answer. It is not necessarily even the additional link, but more likely the rules have changed in google and my site has flushed down the toilet like so many this month!