Is the ODP delisting recently expired domains?

These things have been cloaking my content for months.

[idoc]

The other day, I checked the serps for my "brick and mortar" company's registered name. It is a contrived unique word and out of the top 100 or so most were cloaks or pseudo-directories. Most egregious was 28 distinct URL's that cloak my identical but hashed content and redirect to a single competitor website. Most of these 28 still show odp and Y directory backlinks. These sites were formerly diverse law, doctor, agriculture, or music sites before they were recently re-registered. When I checked at the odp though, I can't find them in searching by domain. Is there a better way to check this... or have there been major improvements in culling these?

[RBuzz]

Recently on the ODP Weblog it was said,

"Robozilla, our automated link checker, has just completed a run of the directory and has flagged up any addresses which are not working. Due to the growth of the directory in recent months and the long gap between this and the previous run, more errors were found than usual."

This was on 4-14, so maybe you caught them just after the culling?

[Marcia]

Someone just recently mentioned in a Google thread a new automated process to detect expireds.

I'll sticky the member.

[rfgdxm1]

Does any meta have further details? I recall a case where the software automatically flagged an expired domain. My understanding of ODP policy is that maintaining what sites that are already listed is a top priority, and I'd certainly check out quickly any possible hijacked domains. My guess is the poster here is referring to a case where there have been major improvements at the ODP in culling scammers.

[windharp]

Robozilla finds only entries that are nonworking. We have some methods to find sites right when a domain becomes available, but all that is very much in beta stage and - as you will surely understand - we won't give out any details.

If you want to report the changed links, head over to the official ODP forum and use the apropriate thread or use the "Update URL" feature to request removal for every link. be sure to include a reason we can validate.

[hutcheson]

idoc, PLEASE provide that list to us. Things like that make the whole directory look bad, and we like to fix them quickly.

[kctipton]

When I checked at the odp though, I can't find them in searching by domain. Is there a better way to check this...

The search index is about a month old. Once it's updated it'll be easier for you to be sure that something is or is not in the directory.