Any guesses how long dmoz search will remain broken?

I don't know just how long it's been broken, but for several days at least and I suspect more.

Does anyone have any clue, from whatever source, how long that state of affairs is likely to last? And why it is measured in days instead of hours?

 

I would debate whether or not it ever really "worked" in the first place!

 

I asked because I am waiting to see whether the repair will have an effect.

My site had been doing fairly well with Google SERP, slowly but surely--and steadily-- rising in the SERPs, up to about #21, when overnight, with no changes (except a few added backlinks that I know of), it dropped to #40-something, where it sits now.

In retrospect, that dropoff appeared to come just about when dmoz search went down. I cannot right away figure how the two would be related--surely, sites using dmoz data still have, as dmoz itself does, the actual listing in the directory pages? And that is all I can see as a connection. But the otherwise-inexplicable step drop and the coincidence in time are suspicious, which is why I am anxious to see what happens when dmoz is repaired.

If the repair does not improve matters, then I am thoroughly flummoxed as to why the sudden drastic drop.

 

Eric,

I don't want to be rude, but your "cause and effect" reasoning simply amazes me. Are you sure that you didn't put you right shoe on before your left on the morning that you ranking dropped? In my view that would be just a suspect.

The fact that DMOZ is down cannot possibly have any relationship to you placement in the SERPs. First Google has their own copy of the DMOZ results which has been uneffected. Secondly Google is notoriously slow updating their copy of the DMOZ directory. The last update of their directory from the DMOZ was months behind.

So here are the things that would have to be in play for DMOZ's problems to effect your SERP placement.

1. Google would have to give particulaily high relevance rating to a DMOZ list rather than to the same listing in their own copy of the directory. There is absolutely no evidence that that is the case. Either that they use the DMOZ site rather than their own, or that they give these listing particularily high relevance ratings.

2. Google would have to be so stupid that they would allow an obvious temporary off line situation to change their entire determination of which sites are relevant. Remember that is their mission in life, to present relevant results for any search term.

 

No: it has been affected. I can sit in Google's Directory on the page listing my site, do a search, and be told it isn't in the directory.

And the issue is nothing whatever to do with Google giving any sort of special significance to directory listings. It is to do with the hundreds of web pages around the world that are duplicates of the dmoz Directory. If, in some way, those "lost" the listing, that would affect backlink counts.

That I can still see the listings in dmoz is why I am unsure if there can be any relation, but I put my shoes on every day, whereas I don't see precipitous drops in SERP--after long, steady rising, and with no site changes--every day or every week or every month. It is therefore not a strained or naive logic to hypothesize that there might be a causal relation between two isolated, unusual events in the same overall sphere that occur more or less simultaneously.

Again, the possible issue is a simple one: backlinks. A backlink count is not a lot of help, because most of those copycat directories do not seem to rise to the minimum PR to be cited--but cumulatively, they doubtless have an effect, which, I gather, is why getting a dmoz listing, and thus hundreds of backlinks, even if low-level, is always recommended.

 

Are you SURE about that - I was poking around recently and based on some stuff I saw, my guess is that an update was taken sometime in the last few weeks ...

alek

 

I think that is correct, but that update was 4 to 6 months in coming. Now I can't swear to that because I think DMOZ is almost a non issue now in the SERPs so I don't pay close attention.

 

wow, it's a full 2GB's? that's huge, really. how on earth can plain text be that large? even with all the sites they have listed, I couldn't imagine it being anywhere near there..

 

I've been waiting on my web site to be added to dmoz for about 1 month now and still nothing has happened.

With all these updates is it likely my site could be added soon? I have a 0 page rank and in dier need of links.

 

Wow fast reply.

I would imagine the web design category would be quite a large category.

Would it be true that Dmoz is the largest online directory to be in? (I really should post new threads)