If they keep finding reasons to ban sites, soon a search in Google is going to return 0 results because every site has been banned.
And google.com itself is just full of content. They don't follow their own webmaster's guidelines... -- Derek
Was thinking exactly the same thing. There are several directories banned (not dmoz clones) and I saw some others sites also banned by G, I really don't think this has something to do with duplicate content. I think it´s got everything to do with linking. In lots of cases you see for instance 10.000 links to one domain with one anchor text. I mean trying too hard get the website in the top position with certain textlinks and the same anchor text, I believe that´s a quick way to get your site banned. I don´t know this for sure, but this is my assumption for what´s going on right now.
Couple of months back there were fight between SE's , they have 8 billion indexed pages......so on.... To acheive this they crawled even garbages. Due to huge collection garbages, they gained "foul" Now they started clearing garbages
That's what I am trying to do (well, as much as I can) with my directory. I can't see google just banning directories for no reason.
Rewriting Articles from article sites is against Most sites TOS. Removing the links it's also bad, You don't want a nasty letter from a laywer? or a letter send to your host telling you are hosting files that violates the copyright of somebody, It could have your site taken down. Do you want that?
I probably didn't make myself clear - what I meant was that I rewrite what I find on others sites to make a description of the site for my directory without using exactly their description. Then there can be no fear of me duplicating their content, no matter how small an amount I use. Takes ages longer though, but quality is maintained.
Dudes, you can complain all you want about this upcoming move by Googs, but I, and I'm sure 99.999% of webmasters who don't operate a DMOZ clone or something similar, could care less. It's not like any of these clones has ever sent us any decent amount of traffic. Probably .00000001 percent a year, if that. So you guys can be all mad at Googs til the end of eternity, and make jokes about them not following their own guidelines, etc, but the truth is, none of your DMOZ clones amount to very much, and their total disappearance from Google will probably do wonders to cleanse the SERPs off useless junk sites with no redeeming value. Sorry to say, but Googs is just cleaving off useless skin. Let the angry retorts from DMOZ clone webmasters commence.
How is re-writing descriptions in different words maintaining 'quality'? Uniqueness, yes-- quality, I can't get... -- Derek
Why? If I get a site submitted to my directory that has been submitted to other directories 100 other times that day or that week then that description is becoming tired, in my opinion. I will look at their site, quality check it for speed of loading and content, and based on the content rewrite the description in my own words. (or ditch it if the site is rubbish). Thus maintains the quality of my site and the descriptions within it. It's what hopefully sets my directory apart from scraper sites and DMOZ clones.
don't know about in the USA but on ntl in the UK even google directory pages show a PR 0 and have done for a couple of weeks at least... there again google don't need the extra back links to boost their PR
I have a dmoz clone that seems to be banned. I think that it has been banned time ago, maybe the domain was banned when it expired and I registered (although I'm not sure, maybe it has been banned recently).
I think it's a relatively difficult thing for google to pull off and in doing so would end up penalizing only a portion of the sites out there - unless they devalued directories as a whole. There's also room for interpretation of the statement. There are some sites out there that are straight clones of DMOZ. There are others that are subsets of DMOZ with unique content - using the directory as a value-add to their site. There are further sites that utilize only a subset of DMOZ data. There are sites that give credit to DMOZ and sites that don't. There are also those sites out there that use "live data" from DMOZ. Which sites will they penalize? How will they discern? How does the Google Directory fit into the picture? I guess we'll all see what happens when it happens. I'm all for devaluing DMOZ or other directory data though. A site shouldn't really be considered that much more valuable than another because they paid someone to submit to 1000 directories with a spider. I can see where it helps to determine a site's theme, but those 1000 backlinks aren't quite as difficult to come by as 1000 organic links.
It would be easy for google to see which sites are the clones and which aren't... It's just a question of duplicate content more than anyhing. Really, it would not be hard to find a DMOZ clone out there, or even a clone of a section of DMOZ... I do believe that directories are losing value also though...