DMOZ does not help rankings

I performed a very careful experiment, and have come to the conclusion that a DMOZ listing does not help google rankings at all.

A site with existing PR4, and a listing by keyword on the 4th page of results. No other SEO going on, got listed in DMOZ. I did not perform any SEO for 30 days now, and the search rankings have not gone up whatsoever. Same results on Yahoo/MSN/G.

Leads me to believe the all the search engines now ignore/discount DMOZ listings and do not weigh a listing into site relevancy.

It may help PR on the next update though, course PR doesn't excite me neither as much as search placement? =)

This coincides with various documents I've read from DMOZ stating that the directory is not intended to help webmasters with search results. It's still a great directory and if your site is relevant to a category, publish it, but don't bother if search results are all you are after.

 

Please come back in two months and give another progress report. I'd like to see longer term experiments on this...

I'm not doubting you, as I pretty much agree with your findings, I just want longer term stats.

 

I'll do the best I can in that regard; however, I can't promise to wait another month before doing any further SEO. I'll extrapolate what I can though in a month and be back.

 

Fair enough...

One of the main reasons I ask is that it does take a while for all the clones to update. Some do it once a week, some once a month, sometimes once a year, so it can take some time...and as that takes time, it takes even longer for Google (and other SE's) to bother running through the clones to actually look for updates.

What was the PR of the category you submitted to? (I'm NOT asking for the cat, just it's PR)

 

The dmoz category page is PR3.

Would you suggest PR has something to do with how frequently clones update their individual pages/cats?

I would love to do a true experiment with dmoz and yahoo where there's absolutely no outside influence and let it run 1, 3, 6 months to see what type of results it generates. That would be kind of a tough experiment though becuase it would have to be nearly a non-active site to pull it off. And of course the challenge of getting listed in dmoz, or paying yahoo's $300.

 

DMOZ is not a tool to help with rankings

 

Neither are forum signatures, but people use them all the time for that anyway

 

yes it will not help in ranking but it ads value to your site if your site listed in dmoz...

 

mostly just another bank link plus other bank links from other sites that pick ODP data.

 

at lest you get some traffic from those unlike dmoz

 

at least you're getting dmoz links. my site has been rejected for a year now, and my site clearly provides more value and content than the listed sites on dmoz.

 

Has it actually been "rejected", or just not yet approved? I believe lots of categories still have URL submissions from as far back as 2006 in them waiting for an editor to get to them. If the bottom of the category does not have an editor listed, then the category will fall into a general editor category which is queued to the busiest of the editors.

If that's the case, and you feel up for the task, perhaps you should volunteer to edit the category.

 

locux,

Is the title given to your site in dmoz the same as the keyword you are testing for?

 

If it's a legitimate business, the title should be its registered business/company name.

We don't do keywords.

 

@ recipe

No, DMOZ has the listing as the company name, not the keywords for SEO. Despite that, even though the link doesn't have the keywords as part of it, I would imagine there would be some positive influence on the search engines.

I'll keep an eye on it, because as others have suggested it may be a delayed reaction.

 

For me Dmoz listing helped me to rank better in SERP. I was No.2 for one keyword but after listing in Dmoz i am No.1.

 

i think listing in dmoz defiantly leads to better ranking.. because dmoz share its data with many other web directories.. listing in DMOZ automatically submit the website to those directories... i think it defiantly improves the ranking...

 

DMOZ cannot improve ranking on its own. It can help though because it is still a good source of a quality backlink. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

very right... no doubt...

 

I think the effect may be specific to what you're up against (ie - industry specific). I've seen situations where it appeared to have a pretty fast effect on SERPs, and situations where it didnt seem to have much (if any) effect. Never bothered to do any stats on it (sites I was looking at werent mine, didnt really care, was just curious).

Guess all you can say is it MAY have a positive effect. It's a good link to have, but the hoopla and excitement about getting/not-getting in is frequently outta proportion to the backlink value.

As such, as has been stated so often, the best bet is to submit (cant hurt) and forget... move on to other things.