link:www.dmoz.org

Only 300.000 Links pointing to dmoz

[djgreg]

Hi guys,

I just tried a link search on Google for www.dmoz.org .
I got 314.000 results. I think i can remember that there waere 800.000 Links before the last update. Maybe this could be the cause for dmoz dropping from PR10 to PR9?
Can anybody else remember how many links there were pointing to dmoz before the last update?

[Chico_Loco]

I'm not surprised - they haven't updated in ages and had some downtime over the past while. If I had a link to them on my site, I's most likely pull it aswell.

Actually, I just checked something, link:www.google.com shows 252,000 which is less than DMOZ yet they have PR10 - thats weird, I'd have though MUCH more sites that exceeded PR4 would link to Google for them to get a PR10 - Proof of manipulation?.

[ciml]

You'd need to collect significantly more evidence to show proof, Chico_Loco. The possible explanations are numerous; for example there are many ODP mirrors with thousands of pages each linking back to DMoz.org, yet they carry little or no PageRank and normally don't show in a backlink search. Google links are often home page links (Google free search box), and I'd estimate that they tend to give more PageRank per link.

[MikeKay]

I'm not sure how many links dmoz had prior to last update but I did notice that Dmoz changed the names of some of their second level categories. Example, search for printing on Google. That directory link for printing will receive this error: The requested category Business > Industries > Printing could not be found. It is likely that this category has been moved to another location within the directory. Seems that Dmoz renamed a few of their top level directories. Now these links won't work. I can image an large number of websites who linked to these sections now have a dead link and won't register as a return link to Dmoz.

[Chico_Loco]

I can image an large number of websites who linked to these sections now have a dead link and won't register as a return link to Dmoz

But those links would not have affected the link:www.dmoz.org query as they don't link direct to the homepage.

[fathom]

But those links would not have affected the link:www.dmoz.org query as they don't link direct to the homepage.

Why not?

I have many links going to deeplink pages, and they show on the backlink query for the domain (since the domain is part of the URL).

[Dante_Maure]

Many have observed what appears to be a re-scaling of PR this last update with sites going down a notch in their displayed PageRank while their relative rankings remained stable.

If this did indeed happen then there would be hundreds of thousands of formerly PR4 (now PR3) sites that would no longer show up in the back link check for ODP.

[djgreg]

But do you really think that so much sites dropped from 4 to 3?
Before the update link:www.dmoz.org brought over 800.000 Links, now there are only 300.000. That means that 500.000 Sites were dropped from 4 to 3?

[fathom]

Because PR is logarithmic there are but a few at PR10 and billions at PR4 or less, so yes it is quite reasonable to assume a mass drop of PR4's to 3.