Web Hitmen - AOL and Google manage to frag DMOZ!

So, talking with a friend of mine about the recent shakeup in Google serps, and got to wondering. I was curious, so I went to make sure that certain sites that were experiencing the shakeup, and that I knew had DMOZ links, still did in fact have those links.

So, I looked, and the links were there. All fine and dandy. The problem, however, is that Google no longer seemed to know that fact. No cache. Nadda. So, as far as Google is concerned, what's the difference?

She blogged about it here. It looks like what happened is, when AOL was having trouble with the directory recently, at some point they lost the redirect that has been in place forever now, causing www requests to go to the non-www version of dmoz.org. Ok, fine, their entire IT department somehow somehow managed to miss something this basic. Sure, it happens. It's not like they're trying to SEO dmoz.org, ya know?

But then couple that with the fact that a) Google doesn't deal with duplicate content all that well, and b) AOL probably forgot to add their pretty little DMOZ directory to Google's Webmaster Console (which would have allowed them to specify www or non-www), and suddenly you have have webicide.

So, au revoir DMOZ, you will be missed by us of the older generations. You will always hold a special place in our hearts. RIP.

Unless, of course, the new owners lined up to snag you when your domain expires on Jan 2, in under 3 weeks, fix ya back up.

-Michael

*define:frag

 

DMOZ is useless, just a waste of space. Drinks on me if dmoz goes bye-bye!

 

Yeah, I'm sure many people would say the same about large portions of the Earth's crust where there is no good real estate above... but still gonna shake things up if it were to disappear.

-Michael

 

I found an article that may be of interest as well, discussing what has happened at DMOZ of late:
http://www.seo-news.com/archives/2006/dec/21.html