Anyone else had their DMOZ title appear in SERPS?

Perhaps Google is going to have greater DMOZ emphasis...

[Chris_1]

I was checking one of our sites in Google and was surprised by the title that appears. This site's entry page currently has zero meta tags on it (I pulled them off the site to see what effect it would have).

I used a search term I haven't used much in the past.

Anyway, I couldn't figure out where the description came from and began checking around. The site is listed in the DMOZ/ODP twice: once for topic and once for region. The regional listing is the newer of the two listings, and THAT is where the description is coming from. That description isn't used anywhere else on our site (and never has been), and only one word of the three word phrase I searched for appears in the DMOZ description.

I thought only Yahoo used their directory titles in their SERPS, but, perhaps Google is going to start leaning towards doing the same; maybe they are testing it out? I wonder what flag or trigger would cause Google to pull a DMOZ description?

Perhaps Google is experimenting with starting to assign much greater value to your DMOZ/ODP description?

Chris

[BillyS]

I've been reporting this for days, seems no one really cares - I'm not sure why. Seems to me that this could be a preview of things to come.

By the way, this same site is sandboxed...

[LizardGroupie]

If search engines care about providing the best quality results, they will use DMOZ data to a great extent.

[Chico_Loco]

My sites in DMOZ, but I don't see that. Very interesting though.

DMOZ obviously doesn't carry much weight though because sites that aren't listed there are outperforming me in a search for "mycompanyname".

[CathyM]

I just observed Google using my site's home page meta tag description as description in the SERP's. It was there for a few minutes and then reverted back to using snippets from the page.

[EarWig]

"If search engines care about providing the best quality results, they will use DMOZ data to a great extent."

Joke of the month for me.

EW

[luckychucky]

Confirming the same here. My DMOZ description is a unique one; it's a very brief, gramatically bizarre sentence-fragment which borders on being nonsensical. Repeated attempts to get just a simple edit have always failed (quintessential DMOZ for you). Anyway, my DMOZ description is so unique, so mangled and weird that it's strikingly identifiable a mile away.

And EarWig, I couldn't agree with you more. I hadn't had the slightest clue Goog was that desperate...jeez louise. Making DMOZ its backbone? If that's the best the Gaggle of Genius Geeks at Googleplex can come up with, that's very pathetic indeed. It makes Google the same as any dinky little DMOZ scraper site out there, billions and billions and billions of them (to paraphrase the late Carl Sagan). Wow...I'm floored.

Thank God I still rank nos. 1-3 for most money serps in my trade...for now, longstandingly despite some unfunny recent fluctuations.

[edited by: luckychucky at 9:42 am (utc) on Feb. 12, 2005]

[Chico_Loco]

"If search engines care about providing the best quality results, they will use DMOZ data to a great extent."

Joke of the month for me.

EW

Are you basing that on the fact that they are slow in updating, slow website, not large database in comparison to search engines?

Firstly, Consider that ODP is one of few editorial catalogs of websites that is edited by humans.. so that provides for some very accurate data about those websites which are listed. This being because they have been validated by humans and are of minimum quality level (that required to be listed).

Now, let us consider how impossible it would be for any computer program to perform editorials on any given website, never mind hundreds of thousands of them.

Once you do a logistics comparison, you'll see that ODP (or any human edited database of websites) would be extremely useful to Google (or MSN & Yahoo) in determining the quality and topic of websites on a relatively broad basis.

My prediction is that ODP will change owners this year (if Netscape sell it). I see Google acquiring it (if they act fast) for a relatively low figure.

It makes Google the same as any dinky little DMOZ scraper site out there

Well, that's exactly what they are, they crawl data and present it with nice colors. The only reason they get away with it now is because they send us webmasters quite a bit of traffic (or USED TO in my case).

[luckychucky]

And, um, that's why Google is worth billions in shareholder valuation. Smells like: _____________

[EarWig]

"Are you basing that on the fact that they are slow in updating, slow website, not large database in comparison to search engines? "

I am basing my comment on the fact that it appears to to take less time to get out of the Google so called "sandbox" than it is to get a listing in DMOZ

IMHO their is nothing wrong with the quality of the serps in Dmoz but as it is believed by most of the geral public that they do provide relevant up to date information, then their so called "free listings" aren`t IMO performing.:;

News article which may or may not be relevant with regard to Google
http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/feb/9.html

EW

[EarWig]

Chris_1

To get back to your observation I have not as yet found any of our client sites with Dmoz Title in the Google serps

Regards
Ray

[Seo1]

Hi there

Google when looking to provide the SERP with your site information will loook first for a DMOZ directory listing for your site.

If it does not find it there it will then look at your page content and then lastly your Title & descripton tags.

Hope this clears things up for you.

Clint

[BillyS]

SEO1 - This is something new. Google is taking the DMOZ listing description and appending it to you home page. It can only be seen on certain data centers.

[luckychucky]

Google when looking to provide the SERP with your site information will loook first for a DMOZ directory listing for your site.
If it does not find it there it will then look at your page content and then lastly your Title & descripton tags.
Hope this clears things up for you.

Speculative nonsense, stated authoritatively.

[angiolo]

I agree: Google considers a lot the Dmoz title.
And you get a boost if your site is listed in a Meta editor profile....

[phpdude]

<<<If search engines care about providing the best quality results, they will use DMOZ data to a great extent.>>>>

If that were to be true, Google would have to take over DMOZ, clean house of editors that are participating in link schemes and other nonsense and then run it themselves.

I find it hard to believe Google would base any of their algorithm on a system that they do not control nor should they. It would open the door to unsavory things that those in the blackhat SEO world are known for.

[surfgatinho]

I have always suspected a DMOZ (or more accurately a Google directory) listing carries a lot of weight with Google. OK you can beat sites listed in the DMOZ but if all things were equal I'd put my money on the site in the directory.

It's a little fustrating because it's one of those things you have no control over - along with the age of a site which seems to be another biggy with G

[Marshall Clark]

Another possibility is that site scraper/hijackers are using DMOZ descriptions when redirecting to these sites and Google is mistakenly applying the text on the 302 page to the destination page.

[g1smd]

I just checked a few listings. I used a search query which was the name of an ODP category (just the final part of the name, not the whole ODP path) and most of the sites in the first few pages have the ODP description as the snippet. It was easy to check as I was the one who wrote most of those descriptions. I then checked several other searches and saw the same thing. Yes, Google is using ODP descriptions in the snippet.

[jimbeetle]

Yes, Google is using ODP descriptions in the snippet.

I admit to being easily confused, and I might be misreading this thread, or I might have missed something over the past few years...

...but isn't this just normal Google behaviour? If a site is listed in the ODP, the ODP description is used; if not, the snippet is taken from the page.

At least, that's the way it used to be.

[luckychucky]

...but isn't this just normal Google behaviour?

Nope. My site description went from the normal juicy-rich description harvested from onsite text, which has been what Google has used without interruption since site launch well over a year ago, to sudden use of an awful DMOZ snippet. No changes on our side precipitated this change, which came entirely from within Goog itself.

[div01]

I have always suspected a DMOZ (or more accurately a Google directory) listing carries a lot of weight with Google. OK you can beat sites listed in the DMOZ but if all things were equal I'd put my money on the site in the directory.

Not always the case. I know someone who owns a site with 10+ DOMOZ listings (deep pages) and he was wiped away in Allegra.

[luckychucky]

Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information

Well, no.
They're just pulling it secondhand from a human-edited source (and a second rate source at that, according to some). So much for the brilliant algorithm which so proudly operates free of human editing...

source:
[news.google.com...]

[Chico_Loco]

I find it hard to believe Google would base any of their algorithm on a system that they do not control nor should they

By your very logic, then why should they trust ANY LINK on the internet that doesn't link out from google.com

They control about 0.1 pico-percent of the entire internet, yet they base all of their search results on this content over which they have no control.

Therefore, why would using ODP, a well respected hand-edited directory, be a negative once you consider their current setup anyway?

[luckychucky]

ODP, a well respected hand-edited directory

Debatable but regardless, we're looking at what appears to be a dramatic change of degree, of weighting relative to the total content available for crunching out there in Cyberspace. It could perhaps credibly be surmised that DMOZ data have suddenly been given a very heavy authority in Google's algorithm. If true, it's too bad for anyone (everyone) who will need to rely on the whims and caprices of the ODP's unresponsive, inconsistent, subjective and inscrutable volunteer human editing force for Google ranking success. Or failure

[Chico_Loco]

They are definetely slow, but they are the largest FREE hand-edited directory, and in that regard you kind of have to respect them.

Ultimately, we have no idea if it's used for ranking purposes in Google, but one would have to assume that it doesn't hurt.

My site is listed in ODP but it still got slapped by Google on this latest update. Others in the rankings are NOT listed... so it can't be a definitive ranking factor neither.

[Chris_1]

Interestingly enough, our site description for those keywords are back to being snippets pulled from the site and is no longer the ODP description.

I'm not sure what I make of it all, but there have been some good theories mentioned...

Thanks,

Chris

[steveb]

What I see consistently (no exceptions yet) so far:

If a site has a meta description, that is used.

If a page has no meta description, but has a dmoz description, that is used.

If a page has neither a meta description nor a dmoz description, the ransom note trash is displayed.

Seems like an awesome idea to me. Only the really clueless will be left with ransom note junk, while non-comatose webmasters will already have solid meta descriptions.

Result: cleaner looking serps, with higher clickthroughs for people with a clue.

[Elixir]

Only the sandboxed sites are using the dmoz information for the Company name search for our sites. If Google resorts to using dmoz as a major part of their algo that together with the sandbox will make their results the most out of date in the industry. It can take two years to get a site into dmoz.

[edit_g]

I'm seeing the DMOZ descriptions used for a lot of {randomcompanyname} searches. Perhaps Google is looking to list DMOZ listed sites first for companyname searches somehow.