DMOZ Articles by SEO Speedwagon

June 20, 2008

DMOZ, Meet Wikipedia

I must say, I find DMOZ and Wikipedia incredibly interesting. Both can be incredibly helpful resources, as manifested by Google's love affair with each, a love affair that makes DMOZ and Wikipedia necessarily difficult to crack. Yet, as just a Friday afternoon observation, how they defend themselves from the onslaught of those attempting to crack them places them on opposite ends of the spectrum. Whereas Wikipedia will respond instantly and error on the side of speedy deletion, DMOZ seems to reserve any type of judgement until full consideration can be placed.

While both defense strategies have their philosophical and practical pros and cons, DMOZ often seems paralyzed by its due process. Perhaps that's why, every once in a while in a matter of concession, you find most of a DMOZ category consisting of Wiki links, or more precisely, 30 out of 53 total links pointing to Wiki pages.

DMOZ, Meet Wikipedia
Posted by tom at 03:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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January 12, 2007

DMOZ Just Won't Die

According to the DMOZ site, they started editing again according to a bolded red section of their site just above their search box prompting people to log in for more information.

Something tells me this weak glimmer of hope isn't going to alter the editorial review process of submissions, but as I've said time and time again, I love to be wrong sometimes. Perhaps our faithful wagon readers have seen some positive change in the review process???

DMOZ Just Won't Die
Posted by sean at 08:36 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)
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December 01, 2006

DMOZ, Please Die Already

I'd like to add to what my fellow co-worker, Tom Lustina, wrote about DMOZ.

DMOZ is a very old entity that needed to die years ago and hopefully will perish soon. DMOZ used to be an incredibly valuable inbound link especially at Google, providing you even got reviewed and indexed in their crappy directory.

I can’t count how many clients I’ve submitted to DMOZ that were never even reviewed. Granted, I only manage a handful of accounts each year, but I’m not the only one fed up with DMOZ’s lack of editorial attentiveness. Ask any SEO about their experience with DMOZ review and approval experience and you’ll see a crazy glaze come over their face like someone just stole their lunch.

As Jill Wahlen points out in one of her more recent posts aptly named “10 Signs That Your SEO Is A Quack�, DMOZ is a great listing to have, but it’s just a link like any other quality human-reviewed directory out there. The main difference here is other directories actually have human beings with a pulse that will typically review & approve or deny your listing in a reasonable time period. Whereas with DMOZ, you’re lucky if you get reviewed inside 12 months if reviewed at all…ever!

In conclusion, my ardent wish is to see DMOZ take the final sail on the Pacific while ablaze in a ritualistic-like farewell to the departed.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!!

DMOZ, Please Die Already
Posted by sean at 09:42 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)
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August 01, 2006

NOODP: Should Google Have Kept Greasing Wheezer?

One of my favorite Little Rascals episodes is called Bear Shooters where Spud can’t join the gang on their hunting trip because he has to stay home and grease his little brother Wheezer. It’s rumored that the band Weezer took it’s name from this classic episode.

"I can't come out," whines Spud. "I've got to stay home and grease Wheezer!"

It all works out for Spud in the end. But, I’m wondering if Google should have stayed inside and greased Wheezer a while longer before adding support for the NOODP tag. Did we celebrate prematurely?

We’ve read several site owner reports that allege their rankings have dropped significantly since implementing the tag on their sites. A few of these also report that they removed the tag and their placements returned to their former positions.

The only Intrapromote client so far that has implemented the tag has also experienced a drop in placement for their most important and competitive search phrase at Google. About the same time, they’ve also seen a major drop in the number of pages indexed by Google.

Coincidence?

Poor Wheezer was better off with the croup?

Hmmmmm . . . . . . . . . .

Our client plans to yank the NOODP tag to see if normalcy resumes. Stay tuned. I’ll let you know what happens.

NOODP: Should Google Have Kept Greasing Wheezer?
Posted by doug at 05:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
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July 20, 2006

How About One More Solid, Danny Sullivan?

As we recently celebrated the liberation of the results page from ODP oppression, I couldn't help but think of a lesser-publicized instance of serp injustice.

It's the same ole story. Site owner forks out $300 and puts together a spotless title, description, and category recommendation for the Yahoo Directory submission. A week later, the site is accepted, but a few changes to the submission are apparent, namely the title, description, and category recommendation. Oh Well, right? The site is in the best directory there is. That's good enough. Site owner thinks, "Sometimes you just gotta say 'What the F@$%!"

Then site owner notices this Yahoo Directory title, which is simply his url, now occupies the spot formerly held by his most glamorous Yahoo result. Site owner thinks of the difference in clickability, and it is that, more than anything, that leads to his drinking problem.

Repeated requests for an update receive as much attention as a new Chevy Chase movie, and that's when site owner remembers that he paid $300 for this treatment! At that point, site owner goes to the window, opens it and sticks his head out and yells, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

So Danny Sullivan, please do us one more solid. Be mad as hell with us. Champion NoYahoo as you did NOODP, cause, uh, no-one's gonna really be free until serp persecution ends.

How About One More Solid, Danny Sullivan?
Posted by tom at 05:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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July 18, 2006

NOODP = Yes!!!

I have no musical reference to my post this week other than to say that I find the instrumental gem called YYZ on Rush’s finest album, Moving Pictures, to be the perfect music to write a blog post to. I highly recommend it. And Neil Peart, I know you're reading this ..... you are the finest drummer on our planet.

Last Thursday, our fair-haired and highly regarded Erik Dafforn sent the Intrapromote staff an email with a Subject line that all IPers (Intrapromote staff) assumed was a bad joke.

The subject line you ask?

“Google now honors NOODP meta tag!�

This would mean that our clients could include a tag on their web pages to tell Google not to pull the often ho hum titles from ODP and use them as the title in search results pages.

“Yeah right�, was simultaneously (I like to think, harmoniously) uttered in our Ohio, Indiana, and Oregon offices as the email appeared in our collective In boxes. However, much to our surprise it is actually true!

Did Google finally get tired of people asking for this or did they quickly follow suit because MSN recently added support for the NOODP tag? Did Danny Sullivan finally get through to Google? Who knows, but my money is on keeping up with the competition.

It was good timing for me since one of the clients I work with needed to shake loose from a Google SERP that listed only their company name as the title. Clickability score? About a 2 out of 10.

If you’re in the same boat of folks disgusted by your ODP title and description and how it shows up upon searches at Google, simply add the following code to the source code of your page:

< META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP" >

NOODP = Yes!!!
Posted by doug at 04:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
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March 09, 2006

If the Brady Bunch Were a Links Page . . .

Sha na na na na na na na na, Sha na na na na.

If the Brady Bunch were a links page, how would you know the Bradys had jumped the shark?

It is necessary for Link Building to be about as time consuming (and exciting) as trying to set the teeter-totter record. After all, you cannot judge a room by its beaded entrance. You have to check out each site, but if you are going to be efficient, you must train your eyes to easily catch the least groovy characteristics of a links page and move on.

So here are some Link Building thoughts inspired by the one day when the lady met this fellow.

• Don't waste time looking for Tiger if you go to his site and get a 404. Just find a new dog.

• If Greg invites you to his room but takes you to his dad's den, assume the worst. A redirected links page is a bad sign!

• Vacations bring bad luck. If you see links to travel sites (and you are not in the travel industry) avoid it like the Brady Tiki.

• Just one Cousin Oliver link can kill. A page linking to a gambling, payday loan, or adult site bears the kiss of death.

• If a site looks like it took a football to the nose, assume it is not being updated or damaged goods, at best.

• A Marcia Marcia Marcia links page has the same keywords repeated too often and is considered Spam Spam Spam.

• Like a bathroom occupied by 6 kids, you never get your due and proper on a page with too many links. Just go somewhere else.

• It looks like somebody stole the playbook when you start to see the same links section duplicated on many different sites. Don't get involved, unless of course it was DMOZ's playbook.

• If you cannot easily find a site's contact information, consider him George Glass.

• Paying someone to date your sister is wrong, unless that person is Yahoo or an established, relevant directory offering link text.

You see kids, a gift is only a good thing when the giver has given thought to that gift. But when the gift the giver gives gives grief, then that gift should give the givee regrets.

If the Brady Bunch Were a Links Page . . .
Posted by tom at 04:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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November 01, 2005

DMOZ: Hard to Get Into, Harder to Escape

So you think it's hard to get your site into the Open Directory Project (DMOZ)? Try getting it OUT.

ABAKUS Internet Marketing Blog posted this morning about one man's efforts to have his site removed from DMOZ.

As I've written about before, Google sometimes experiments with its user interface by pulling title and description data from a site's entry in DMOZ. Site owners themselves frequently dislike this phenomenon, because it gives them little or no control over how sites appear on a Google results page. The case found by ABAKUS is no different. In the Resource Zone thread it cites, a site owner asks for removal from the directory because

• Google is pulling his DMOZ data for its results pages, and
  
• That data, apparently created by a DMOZ editor, was a poor (if not inaccurate) description of his site, and he claims it was causing him to lose business.

If you follow these topics closely, this thread is a classic - a perfect illustration of why site owners and DMOZ editors have few positive words for each other. While the situation seemed to resolve itself rather peacefully, the original question - why, upon request of a site owner, a site cannot (or will not) be removed from DMOZ - is never really answered, other than it's simply not their policy.

DMOZ: Hard to Get Into, Harder to Escape
Posted by erik at 03:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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August 10, 2005

Nike, Google, and the DMOZ Description

In scoping out a site redesign, a client asked me to take a look at a Google query for "Nike" - specifically to determine how Google was creating this descriptive text:

Apparel, shoes and accessories.

This client is pretty search-savvy, so I assumed he'd checked the Nike meta data, and he had. Nike sets a cookie, does a quick script-based geo-sniff test, then passes the user on to a page named main.html. Neither the root page nor main.html has meta description or keywords tags (or any crawlable text, for that matter), so he was stumped about where the description was coming from.

Not a lot of people know that Google sometimes pulls Open Directory Project (DMOZ) descriptions to use as descriptive text on results pages (and when I say sometimes, there's little predictability about it. More on this later.) In Nike's case, they seemed to luck into a nice, minimalist description that appears to have been written by an actual DMOZ editor. I doubt that anyone in Nike's e-Marketing wing is capable of such restraint.

So Nike got lucky here. Flash home page with immediate redirect to another full-Flash page, no meta data, but good descriptive snippet. The moral here? Check your DMOZ description in the off-chance that Google will use it to describe your site. And if you don't like your current description, request a change. Getting an existing description changed often happens much faster than getting your site accepted in the first place, provided you use your head and request something sensible.

Nike, Google, and the DMOZ Description
Posted by erik at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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