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The recent G changes favor larger sites with DMOZ listing and links coming from larger sites with DMOZ listings.
Mom and Pop selling homemade candy on the internet may be looking for some other line of work soon as will thousands and thousands of small webbers.
This change in Google's algo no longers serves the internet as a whole - but gives a step up for the big to get bigger and the small to stay away. Granted, anyone can claw their way to the top, but the playing field is no longer level.
Most of the top G search results favor listings in DMOZ which frowns on any type of affiliate site. It's also a listing that can be very hard to get because of under-staffing at ODP. And in many many cases people just don't know it's important!
Most of the top G search results favor large sites with hundreds of pages rather that a dozen or two - even though small sites bring some of the best content to the web.
Most of the top G results have links from other sites that are also listed in DMOZ and are large as well.
This is a major change from G's previous policy and practices.
With Google's changes and Yahoo's need for a Gold Card the interent may be facing a new and interesting path.
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The playing field has never been level. Not on the web, or even in the 3-D world of life. There always has been and always will be people/organizations who have a greater advantage than you.
It's also a listing that can be very hard to get because of under-staffing at ODP.
You got that right. We submitted our Body Jewelry business/site over 7 months ago...and it still sits in the "queue".
Meanwhile, other "competitors" build mirror after spammy mirror, all pulling from the same database, and google gobbles them up and shoots them to the top.
Hell...we're the only member of the BBB (that I can find) in our entire genre, yet the above types of sites are ruling the serps.
Ah well...we're just doing what google obvisouly wants us to do and "paying" for the exposure we deserve.
It's not a Google Glitch!
You are stating this as fact. Where is the supporting evidence?
did i miss this or something? since when did G have pay for inclusion in their SERPs?
GoogleGuy said that DMOZ listing does not get any extra points, I don't see any favor to large sites either.
I believe Google uses same Algo criteria for a site large or small.
I do not see any tendencies of large sites or sites with listings on ODP being favoured, but that may very well be a question about which search terms you use for a test.
I wish we could post examples here but it's against the wishes of WebmasterWorld so spend a little time doing searchs and see for your self.
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Maybe us webmasters should form some kind of union and demand that google go back to older algos... otherwise we'll gang up and have a mass boycott of adwords... :-)
What Google *appears* to have essentially done is to say...
'We no longer trust our own computer generated ranking system, so we will now only trust human edited directories to tell us what is a good site.'
Now, you can play this game with Google if you like and spend the next year trying to get listed in as many human edited directories as possible (or pay them extortion money with adwords) and hope you eventually get past Google’s algo filters or you can do as I have done and say screw Google. I am telling everyone I know to not use Google any more. I have taken all Google search boxes off my sites. The only way to change Google’s behavior at this point is to make it hurt their bottom line.
I have a small site (less than 50 pages) that Google loves and has been courting for years now.
>A DMOZ listing is like solid gold for the latest Google algo.
How many examples do you want that disprove this fallacy?
You are stating this as fact. Where is the supporting evidence?
The noose gets tighter each update, so Google is apparently pleased with its new algo. This has been going on for nearly 5 months. If it were a glitch, surely Google would have corrected it by now. I realize that none of us has access to the algo (except GoogleGuy), so we can't prove it one way or another, but what we can see (i.e., the results) indicate that this is a deliberate flushing of sites, both legit and spammy.
A cluster bomb - their answer to the Google bomb.
This is a very recent change - what GG said some time back about DMOZ not offering a boost seems to no longer be the case.
Google had the very best algo there was, but in their atempt to fight spam or improve on something that didn't need improving they have taken several steps back.
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I seriously doubt the ODP has anything to do with this. To start, Google has *always* favored larger sites. The larger a site is, that tends to mean more content garnering more links from other sites. Higher PR, and more anchor text. The typical ODP commercial cat has low PR, and plenty of sites listed which dilutes the amount of PR transferred to each. Seriously, it's all kinds of easy to find teenagers with personal pages that getting a link on will do you more good with Google than an ODP listing. The teenager home pages transfer much more PR. And, unlike the ODP, you can get exactly the keyword rich anchor text you want from these teenagers.
>It's also a listing that can be very hard to get because of under-staffing at ODP.
A pox on all those volunteer editors for not working fast enough for you.
>And in many many cases people just don't know it's important!
Because it isn't.
>This is a major change from G's previous policy and practices.
Not that I can see.
How many examples do you want that actually prove it?
If you want to see where Google is heading with 2 and 3 word searches all you have to do is look at what they have already done to 1 word searches.
travel
cruises
vacation
chocolate
tea
golf
I could go on and on. The only way you will consistently get in those highly contested commercial-phrase top results with Google now are by having a directory listing of some sort. This concept is now moving into the 2 and 3 word phrases with Google. Yes it is stupid and yes it is Google.
I think you people are just trying to explain your lack of success by attributing rankings to factors beyond your control, like a DMOZ listing.
Remember to ck a site in the directory you have to carry the URL back to domain.com and not domain.com/something
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Do you work at Google by chance? lol
However if you are happy with the results you are getting, great, but what we are talking about is a change that recently happened, not poor web developer skills.
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The one significant problem I have with your claim about the value of ODP listings is you also wrote:
"Most of the top G search results favor large sites with hundreds of pages rather that a dozen or two - even though small sites bring some of the best content to the web."
If you are seeing large sites with hundreds of pages that also have ODP listings holding almost all the top positions, then it may be that it is site size that is what really counts, rather than an ODP listing. Assuming your hypothesis about an ODP listing being that important is true, evidence to support that would be that small sites with just a few pages which are ODP listed are typically beating out large, comprehensive sites in the SERPs.
The case of 404 pages and sometimes server not found pages is very puzzling. In some ways it almost looks like the database contains stale data, as if a data recovery was done or something. I mean, some of the sites that are listed have been 404 for years!
I don't see a favoring of big sites or ODP sites or anything like that in my searches.
But I'll tell you one thing. I do hundreds of searches per day, and google's results in the last 30 days or so are worse than altavista 3 or 4 years ago at it's worst. This is from the point of view of trying to find information (not commercial sites) that I am looking for.
And, as a surfer, I am finding myself trying the newer yahoo search more and more. I don't really like all of their advertisements, but I need to find the right data, not some silly link farm, link page, or worse, three pages of guestbooks when I am looking for information about Alexander the great or rome or my old college teacher.
I am the web developer for a site that exactly matches what you just said. It's a site with about 50 pages and it ranks 9 under a keyphrase - every site above it is DMOZed - but my clients site beat out many, much larger sites that are not DMOZed.
The top 12 listings for that keyphrase are in DMOZ.
Another example: We work with a car dealer who has not had any luck getting into DMOZ for some unknown reason (lack of editors I would guess) They were Number One for all their important terms relating to their city and state.
Now they are not on the radar (Google says they don't have a penalty) but all the junk that get's served up is in DMOZ. None of the search results are even close to what someone would be looking for but they are in DMOZ - go figure.
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