Google using more DMOZ clones

Proliferation of DMOZ clones appearing in backlinks

[IanTurner]

Update Esmeralda seems to have significantly amplified the benefit of having that all important DMOZ link, with many more clones now appearing in backlink results.

[Dave_Hawley]

RE: The ODP social contract forbids them from ever charging a fee

Surely any contact can be rivised, or dropped. Or is this wishful thinking :o)

[John_Creed]

I don't see why DMOZ links shouldn't be counted multiple times. If someone thinks DMOZ is good enough to list its links on their site...than that's another "vote" for my and your sites.

However - if someone was to type in "directory" in a search engine than those clones should't show because they're duplicate content.

But as far as link voting is concerned, they're ligitimate votes. (Most DMOZ clones don't have high PR's anyway.)

A one-way link from a DMOZ clone is much more ligitimate than a link on someones links page where they're link swapping just for the purpose or adding PR.

[rfgdxm1]

>Surely any contact can be rivised, or dropped. Or is this wishful thinking )

If Netscape could legally, they wouldn't want to do so politically. Some ODP editors, including former ones, would complain that Netscape is now using their former volunteer labor to profit. AOL/Time Warner wouldn't want the bad will this would generate.

[IanTurner]

John_Creed, I for one can think of ways I could use DMOZ clones to benefit my own sites against the competition such as

Removing competing sites from categories I was interested in to boost my own sites.

Adding spam sites that wouldn't normally get into DMOZ into categories.

Giving my sites multiple listings in all appropriate categories.

Creating numerous clones on different IP addresses to further boost the above benefits.

Any more needed?

From the above I would suggest that it would be good policy to remove DMOZ clones from the Pagerank calculation.

[steveb]

Um, Ian, what you just proposed is to make non-Dmoz clones! Of course you can make a bunch of sites that have links to your sites and not competitors, and even use Dmoz as a seed (leaving links to unrelated sites). But that has zero to do with being a Dmoz clone.

[IanTurner]

I prefer to think of it as making slightly mutated DMOZ clones but if your being really tight in the definition they would not be exact clones.

However the effect could even be used with clones if your sites do better in DMOZ than your competitors.