Should I fear adding myself to DMOZ?

[eduardo]

My personal site, which is a blog, has a PR6. I was considering adding myself to DMOZ since I read in this site that Its A Good Thing.

I'm a little afraid that if I add myself to DMOZ my PR or positioning will take a hit. Since I'm now catalogued, google knows more about me and can remove my site from certain searches.

Do I have anything to worry about? Am I being too paranoid?

[Mark_A]

Not sure I understand.
Inward links are usually thought of as good.

Is your preferred description for odp one that the editors there are likely to accept?

And what is the PR of the suitable cat in ODP?

[tigger]

A Dmoz link can only help a site so you've lost me here

[eduardo]

Sorry for the confusion. For example, currently I get a lot of hits for "old cars" since searching for that brings my site at the #1 position.

I'm afraid that if I add myself to DMOZ under weblogs (which is the most apropriate category) the searches will be affected since now google knows that my site is a weblog and will give preference to sites that it knows are about cars.

Hope I explained myself.

[Powdork]

It certainly shouldn't hurt you. To get the maximum benefit you should make sure the title of your site includes your keywords. OTOH, you shouldn't change your title to get a better listing with DMOZ.

[tigger]

I agree with Powdork

[2_much]

That's a really interesting issue you're bringing up Eduardo. Personally, I think you would be okay with the DMOZ listing so long as the anchor text includes your target keywords.

I heard a lot of talk at SES about contextuality, seems that people are implying that Google takes context into analysis. I don't see how this can be. But I heard quite a few people mention it.

So it's an intersting question. I can't imagine how the would could work entirely "contextually", so there's room for "unthemed" links, separate from rankings. But perhaps they're moving into more advanced forms of contextuality that I'm not aware of.

[tigger]

>>contextuality

OK it's a Sunday morning so could you explain what you mean, for us thick'o's :)

[amazed]

PR 6 is very good anyway - I doubt it would be improved by DMOZ.

Google seems to be experimenting continuously - I think I noticed directory listings having an effect a while ago.

A weblog talking about everything under the sun being listed under weblog would be not much use for the user - Either I am interested in the author or parts of the content. So I would look under the subject in a directory or the author.

[tigger]

no but a good Dmoz listing does help the site hit the high spot on Google, one of my sites I've been struggling to get into the top 10 for sometime and because it's an affiliated based site Dmoz won't list, but one of competitors has just gone straight in at number 2 (pulling up 2ml results) with a really naff very un-optimised site :(

[netcommr]

Am I being too paranoid

yes

get it, plus about 20 other real good links. maybe a 7 is in your future.

don't worry about your keyword set in relation of Dmoz to Google.

[Small Website Guy]

It seems to me that if you have a PR6, there must be a lot of other links into the site that Google is using to figure out your content.

Whether the DMOZ link would just be one more link of many, or if Google attaches some extra special importance to it, is something I don't have the answer to.

It's pretty cool that your blog has such a high PR.

[twilight47]

Little things add up. A single ODP link regardless of its PR will help any site in someway. Additionally, many other sites use the ODP directory and although they may have small PR, as long as they're not penalized, they will help your PR. Another boost is that once Google updates their directory (that can take a long time) it's another good link. They all add up, whether they show up in your backlinks or not. Just my $0.02. :)

[kriskd]

Eduardo,

Perhaps you could put your site in your profile or sticky-mail it to me? I wouldn't mind seeing it just for curiousity sake.

Kris