Forum Moderators: mack
Is it only me, or is there anyone having a similar experience?
Maybe they are phasing this in.
-byron
I hope to God that this doesn't stick. DMOZ doesn't need anymore pull than it already has.
IMHO...this isn't a good thing.
Excuse me, just had to get that off my chest.
In my particular field of endevour it just ROTS.
My section of their ROTTEN directory is out of date by YEARS and has zero editors.
And yet, as expected, I get turned down as an editor and of course, they won't say why.
Anything that uses them is by definiton a BAD THING.
Pull? What pull? Overhyped value of a link from DMOZ helping in other search engines?
No offense to anyone that is an editor there - it started as a good thing, but it's time has been and gone, and they should have let this thing die about 2002.
As for MSN, I hope they aren't stupid enough to stick with this. It's hard to be 'modern' when you're pulling crap from five years ago...
One thing though, DMOZ isn't a search engine and does not care for your results so why should descriptions be marketing lines or optimised keywords? If a search engine uses DMOZ then that's upto the search engine. How can DMOZ be blamed and slated for that? Also, if you don't agree with it, why list there?
I have a feeling many of you are missing the point of DMOZ.
There are directories out there equal to or better than DMOZ... IMO DMOZ is used primarily BY SEO's for the purpose of attaining BETTER SEARCH ENGINE RANKING.
It is nothing more than a breeding pool for corruption and self promotion. It once had a noble cause, but like everything else on the planet - selfish, greedy a-holes messed it up.
We "list" in it because it gives a nice sharp boost to our sites visibility, not because we want the descriptions of OUR SITES rewritten in a less appealing fashion to appear as if WE OURSELVES wrote it in the search engine.
"We 'list' in it because it gives a nice sharp boost to our sites visibility, not because we want the descriptions of OUR SITES rewritten in a less appealing fashion to appear as if WE OURSELVES wrote it in the search engine." - Again, only because the search engines give it value so blame them, not DMOZ.
You may be interested to know that for any given website (that is listed in ODP) we will be in a continual process of tuning when their ODP listing might appear as a description on our site by taking into account a number of factors including such things as the actual text on the webpage, meta info about the page, and the ODP description itself...
As always, we are constantly looking to improve, so please send any specific feedback on this (whether related to the description of your site, or others) along via stickymail and let us know what you think!
Thanks!
- msndude
I did sticky msndude to suggest that they sack who ever thought up the idea - truely amazing that this is the best they can come up with!
Use / expanding BCentral would be a good move if they edited descriptions of sites. At least its a way of securing own fresh up to date content rather than following someone else.
The current daft idea is like copying an older childs school homework because you cant be bothered only to find out they are more stupid than you are when you get Ungraded for it!
You have to laugh
what sort of company has its own expanding directory and then wants to copy someone elses work?
The end result of a search engine is only copies of other people's work -- copies of millions of other people's work, in fact.
But some other people's work is generally dependable (both Google and now MSN are using ODP's work as their research must presumably show it adds some value) while others' is highly suspect (all that work needed to weed spam, and mirrors, and hidden text, and cloaked pages, etc etc).
The ODP's 4.5+ million listings is a beacon of sanity compared to the morass that MSNbot and others have to traverse.
The answer is not for MSN to stop using the ODP because the ODP is not perfect: it's for webmasters en masse to work to improve that swamp so MSN doesn't need to use the ODP.
Don't blame MSN or the ODP for the failings of a whole industry. Instead, work to get it fixed. This is the Internet, things are meant to work at wapr speed: so it surely shouldn't take more than six months, max.
I have a DMoz only entry - I did not pick the description - the 'editor' of Dmoz did, and it doesn't even contain my main keyword for what the site is about!
MSN traffic has dropped to virtually zero.
DMOZ is a free directory 'for people' and does not care for your SERP or how search engines use its data.
Why should it contain keywords just to assist your rank?
Why should it contain keywords just to assist your rank? >
It shouldn't - it should contain keywords so that a searcher of Dmoz finds sites relevant to their search.
We have a widgetery shop - a searcher would want to know it's a widget shop, but the words Dmoz have picked do not even contain the word widgetery. That's what our site is - a widgetery shop. Otherwise what is the point of Dmoz?
That's what our site is - a widgetery shop. Otherwise what is the point of Dmoz?
To categorise websites. As long as you're in a widget category then it's clear what your shop sells. Adding keywords may affect your rank but it's not necessary information for the user which is why the editor probably didn't include it.
