Question about links

Are they good links or bad links?

[Harry]

Months ago, when we added to Dmoz and the Goggle directory, we've noticed that a series of "directory" sites linked every single sites in our category to build up their directory. What's that all about. Usually, we'd expect to be charged for such a thing.

Since we discover one of those new "directory" with a link to our site once a week, we don't even bother asking them to remove the links. Some of those sites have nothing to do at all with us (well most of them) but the directory are made for anything to barber shop resources to guitar player's gears. Surely all these nice folks don't need to have a comprenhensive directory mimicking dmoz?

What are they up to? Anyone has an idea?

[marcs]

There are tons of DMOZ mirrors out there, maybe that is what you are seeing.

Have you compared their listings/entries to DMOZ listings/entries for your category?

[Harry]

The listings are exactly like Dmoz. So what do those exist for?

[synergy]

They are just directories using the DMOZ dump. Google does this exact same thing for it's directory.

DMOZ data can be used in a variety of ways.

No telling why someone offering barber shop info would want to have a category about dogs. In a case like this, they probably just dont know how to use the DMOZ data :)

[nakulgoyal]

Sometimes people put it to have content and they modify it in some ways so that they keep all the traffic those pages of content receive.