Forum Moderators: open
Should PR vary across different sections of a directory
ie:
Regional/North_America/United_States/New_York/Health/Dentistry/ PR 4
while
Regional/North_America/United_States/New_York/Society_and_Culture/Politics/ PR5
Is politics a more important section that dentistry?
Wouldn't it make more sense to simply apply a universal PR across the whole directory?
A site listed in Top/Health/
Is probably much larger and a much better heath resource than something that is listed in:
Top/Health/Subcat/Subcat/Subcat/Subcat/Subcat/
Its the difference between a WebMD and a page on an individuals' experience with GERD, athletes foot or something else.
WebMD or some other comprehensive site most likely deserves a higher PR than a personal page on a specific health topic.
Theory is great. Unfortunately, DMOZ editors can, and do, move more relevant sites to less relevant categories. Trying to appeal is rather like taking a twenty foot run into a concrete wall.
I saw my main site get moved from a PR 4 cat to a PR 0 cat. The excuse was an "overhaul" of the entire cat structure. The result was to leave the big boys, some with really lousy brochure sites, up in the PR 4 and 5 levels, while some information rich sites took the shaft pretty big.
The two editors in the cats in questions are players in the industry. One of them actually sells themselves as a consultant and web design/SEO man to the industry in question.
Go figure...
WBF
Editors are not supposed to consider PR at Google, or the way any data user uses the data, when they are editing. So it's not usually going to matter to an editor what the PR of the categories in question are.
If an editor is moving competition to lower categories while leaving their own site in a higher category, then it is possible there is editor abuse happening. If you believe there has been abuse of editing privileges, there are a few ways to report it, and metas at ODP--such as myself--take that very seriously.
Information on reporting abuse:
[webmasterworld.com...]
That is the nub of it. DMOZ editors put sites into what they consider the most relevant category, period.
And in the real world, considering that a DMOZ link is not rated in importance higher than any other link, why worry about the PR of your DMOZ link.
If you are running your web site effectively, it will be only one of a bunch of links. By all means hope that it has a high PR, but if it does not, its not the end of the world
The editor's task is to arrange sites in a logical order that is of value for visitors. By and large, this will result in more "major" sites being further up the directory, and smaller sites being pushed down into a more precise category.
But.. incidentally, in PageRank terms it's better to organise the directory like this. Do you want to fight with 200 sites for a PR of 5 in a crowded category, or 20 sites for a PR of 4 in a less crowded one? Ultimately, it all works out pretty much the same.
Also, there won't be any PR0 pages at DMOZ in the long term, my guess is that it's a new category and the PR will catch up with it later.
How is PR a DMOZ topic and not a Google topic?
At the most logical level, it isn't. However stories like cornwall's are posted here and other places every week or two:
The two editors in the cats in questions are players in the industry. One of them actually sells themselves as a consultant and web design/SEO man to the industry in question.
DMOZ doesn't care about Google. But, the DMOZ editors who are there specifically to promote sites(their own or their clients) definately do.
If WBF is making an abuse accusation, this forum isn't a very effective place to do it. If he's looking to post a highly unlikely reason to explain why he isn't listed _yet_, then of course this is the best place. :( He also is saying a lot about his "industry" if he thinks two of his competitors can't possibly be fair as editors.
Those were my words.
DMOZ will do what it does. They tend to list my sites, and generally in appropriate cats.
I submit and get on with life. I really have better things to do (like generate cotent:))
WBF
You can get a list of DMOZ metas at
[dmoz.org...]
and whilst you or I could in theory sign up to WebmasterWorld as "kctipton" you can rest assured that the fraud would get picked up in 24 hours ;)
not quite sure why anyone else would want to claim to be kctipton!
You have no idea how much fun it is to be me.
