DMOZ categories as a link next to listings.

Been gone a while, anyone still missing them.

[mack]

Does anyone miss the links to relates categories within Google serps.

Today for example I was searching for "foo widget" It was great when you saw a site with the category next to it.. that way you could be fairly certain every site within that cat was going to be on a simlar theme.

What I now use is...

[ foo widget +"dmoz" ]. At leat that way it will display the ODP category within the results.

Anyone else still missing them.

Mack.

[europeforvisitors]

And the carpenter who is very good with a saw ... still needs a drill sometimes.

True, but how often do you find a saw that has links to a drill? :-)

[g1smd]

>> >> Interior pages can get Directory listings. << <<

>> I don't think it's very common, though. <<

Every Geocities result is an internal page result as far as the geocities domain is concerned. Same for at least several thousand other sites too.

[g1smd]

Wierd.

I just looked at some backlinks in the logfiles, and followed one back to comcast search.

They have a Google search on their site, and that still includes the Google category links and the ODP descriptions too. example [comcast.net]

How's that work then?

[Stefan]

Hey, g1smd, very cool! There's our site with the directory link again...

How are they doing that? Using some different G feed?

[Powdork]

myway.com also has the category but a different snippet.

[hutcheson]

>True, but how often do you find a saw that has links to a drill?

Yes, Google has to decide whether they want to be merely a world-class saw, or a saw with a Swiss-Army knife in the handle, or a whole toolbox -- whatever that means.

[rfgdxm1]

>How are they doing that? Using some different G feed?

My guess is the same feed; it is just Google has decided to hide the fact a page is ODP listed on their own site. It may be that some of their partners using ODP data actually *want* the ODP links. Particularly now, as this is a feature that Google lacks.

[RFranzen]

It is encouraging to see they haven't completely dropped the concept of category links within their SERPs. :)

-- Rich

[Calum]

What is to stop us from switching to comcast away from G then? You appear to get G ordered SERP's, plus the directory info!

[muesli]

lazyness and lack of google toolbar support.

[AthlonInside]

Finally Google realize DMOZ is no longer that useful for visitors.

[Please Be Gentle]

Hi all
I think it is possible that most normal searchers didn't realize that the DMOZ results were hand-reviewed and how useful they could be.
Who could blame them? Saying that the ctr was low is hardly surprising, but I think Google should have emphasized this facet more as it is a bonus.(I know I'm always moaning about Google not teaching people to search and use things like the tilde, and I know they don't listen, but hey it's a personal interest of mine ). Even if people didn't know about the DMOZ, they probably benefitted from the DMOZ category and description in the serps. I found that even the category description was more human-friendly than the enigmatic snippet. For instance if you searched for something like "Apple", the snippet might tell you something glib like "best deals in apples here", whereas the category would have something like, "Top/Computers/.../apple", which at least would indicate whether you were looking at the right type of apple result. Also, if you saw this as a result you wouldn't click on it if you were actually looking for apple fruit. That doesn't make it any less useful, as it will save you time and stop you from clicking on an irrelevant link. If you saw this result, it might even spur you into using additional terms (here fruit) in your query to skew it in the desired direction. Anyway, just because people don't click on something doesn't mean that they don't read it, or that it is not useful. A lot of people I know have no idea what the cached link is for, perhaps if it had a more descriptive title like "saved" or "saved page", the ctr on that would be even greater.
Furthermore, if they want to de-clutter valuable real estate, are they going to be adding more to the top of the results? As it is, they should only put one google news result with a link to news.google.com, rather than the 3 or 4 lines I sometimes see there.
What worried me here is that Steveb suggested they were removing DMOZ to make way for their personalized search which is in labs at the moment. As I mentioned in the "Google Personalized searches" thread you cannot modify preferences on a per query basis to skew results in a particular direction ( which I think would be useful as having too many interests can dilute the efficacy of the personalized search). Also, as I mentioned in the same thread on May 4th, I cannot create a profile in "http://labs.google.com/personalized/profile.html" as there is an error on the page (an unclosed html tag) so that the full page doesn't show up. I have tried to access this page every day since May 3rd and still have been unable to do so. Nobody answered my thread so I am not sure whether others are experiencing the same "create profile" problems.
Anyway, back on topic, I had not realized that the DMOZ categories were no longer available on the ordinary serps as I search via the API and they are still there. I find them very useful, and I hope that they don't remove them from the API. I also hope that they reinstate DMOZ in the normal results for the benefit of normal searchers. Once again, I appreciate that this plea will probably fall on deaf ears again, but there's no harm in trying.
With Kindest Regards
Please Be Gentle

[Stefan]

Finally Google realize DMOZ is no longer that useful for visitors.

Perhaps they realize that they can't make money off of it...

Myself, as a user, I find DMOZ more pertinent than the pseudo-directory pages that Google presents as serps. At least with the ODP you stand a chance of finding a source-site, rather than a link-site.

[Mozart]

I agree with all those who stated that the DMOZ category under the search listings was a helpful tool in separating and refining searches.

I know of one specific site who had accidentally SEOed a page for a keyword totally unrelated to them - due to a large sponsor. That site did not have a DMOZ category. They wondered why all those people visited just this one page and then immediately left again until they found out the search term.

Had a DMOZ category been displayed under their search listing all those visitors could have been spared the extra click.

Please Google, bring back the DMOZ Categories and the directory tab!

Mozart