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We have an important website for four years now. The website was the first of its kind in a european country. It is a simple website (only one page) but big and important in the relevant country. DMOZ als had a link for some years now to our website. But unfortunately the link disappeared this month. It appeared that a competitor (who owns a competitive website for only a few months now) became the editor of the DMOZ category. This competitor removed our website from DMOZ. Needless to say this could do us some serious harm in the near future due to decreasing PR value in Google.
What is the best way to deal with this problem?
My documented evidence indicates different.
>>There is no SPAM there is just the successful and the failures.
I disagree, doesn’t mean I’m right, just means I’m seeing something different, and when you do a flow chart, it is obvious what is going on.
>>If a really good SEO person had control of 100 of the websites in the Fortune 500 it would be impossible to rank on Google for anything.
And in my industry that is what is going on and has been for 4 years now. I have 4 years worth is evidence now, and some of it borders on anti-trust issues.
>>There is another thread going on right now talking about penaltys.
Agree some issues that people think are penalties is just bad coding at the search engines and not penalties at all. (and without exception all the problems started when at least 2 of the 3 major SE’s outsourced their work and I have X-Y charts that indicate this)
Speaking of penalties, even when the alleged SEO, that had lots-o-self-inputted-links in DMOZ got caught and the links were deleted and the editor went away, the sites they are SEO’ing for were not penalized for it. Based on this, I’m not so convinced that (G) is all that concerned about it. If they were, that site would be gone from (G), but because of the SEO’s unethical behavior, they rank well due to public exposure and backlinks and building a forum even though when they first started they knew nothing about the topic, they are just a portal with all content being from their advertisers and the forum. If it wasn’t for them spamming in the first place, they could not have generated any traffic based on their knowledge of the topic.
>>If you are complaining you don't know what you are doing.
That would imply that the search engines do not have any bugs, and believe me, every piece of software has bugs, its just a matter of when someone finds them and the impact they had on the final outcome, and that everyone in the world is ethical, and every designed system is error free. I think we both know that isn’t true.
>>We don't put all are eggs in one basket either.
GOD if I hear that one more time I’m going to puke. So is the proverbial basket the search engines or is the basket the Internet itself or is the proverbial basket a single product or product line?
>>SEO is hard work.
So is robbing banks, I’m missing your point.
We have been listed in DMOZ for years - in fact had almost forgotten about it.
For May 21-27 2004 (ecommerce site only):
Google driven hits - 75,553
DMOZ drivern hits: 18.
Yahoo: 17,785
I get more hits from "how stuff works" than from DMOZ.
Your missing the point, the point is not how many hits you get from any given directory, it is how many search engines also use that directory and how many sites pay to use the directory's listings. It's exponential. Then add to that the number of keywords that can be found under any given category weather it is relevant to the actual site or not.
ogletree
You may be a ‘real’ professional SEO and NOT take part in such practices, but you cannot deny that there are lots of wan-a-be professional SEO that cannot do it without the unethical behavior. No too long ago, the posts are still here, there were many editors praising the ‘deep links’ at a directory as legal above board but apparently someone else didn’t think so because some of that non-sense has stopped. If it was trivial, then 1) it would not have started in the first place, and 2) someone would not have been concerned enough about legal matters to at least attempt the best that they can to get it stopped.
DMOZ is the only authoritative guide to the internet. I am still waiting for someone to propose something more authoritative.
And I think having a link in the most authoritative guide on the internert has something to be said for it. Especially, as it gets harder and harder to get in.
The reason being is that I am pretty sure most (savvy) people go to dmoz when they're looking for like minded websites.
So you may not get direct traffic generated by a dmoz listing, but there could be a lot of traffic you do not know about simply because it's not accredited.
It's kind of like billboard advertising. It's hard to know where the customers are coming from, but they are coming.
Or like going to a trade show. You have to show your face so that people know you are a contender.
[edited by: skibum at 8:08 pm (utc) on May 28, 2004]
If any search engines use it, it is not apparent in the data we have. The top 100 ranked hits all come from "recognized" search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, even Hot Bot.
And nobody PAYS to use that data. IMO it is worth just about what it costs...
I had a large list of sites just like it
I have the same problem with Yellow Pages. That's why I refuse to be listed in it.
And I try to train any prospective clients that Yellow Pages is not a good place to look for the businesses I want them to find.
I only have one site with a PR6, and I'm pretty sure that it owes its high PR to being listed in a DMOZ PR7 category.
That may not be any better than any other PR7 link, but PR7 links aren't so easy to come by.
