Then I wish you good luck. May be because of the publicity generated in this forum, you will succeed to be removed but in the normal cases, experience has shown that the only language that DMOZ understands is force.
It is possible that titles of listed sites in the directory are not complaint - this does not change the issue. I sampled a bunch listings with "Virtual Tour" in the title and found, for the most part, the words "Virtual Tour" were in the page title. An example is: http://www.louvre.or.jp/louvre/QTVR/anglais/ . You will see that the title: "Voyage Virtuel au Musee du Louvre" "Virtual Tour of the Louvre Museum". Note that "Virtual Tour" is in the title of the site. Have you considered changing "Explore the Taj Mahal" to "Virtual Tour of the Taj Mahal"? You really have a great website and I learned alot from it. I would hate to see it removed.
Sorry donelson, but I like your site too. Why don't you just change the title on the site to what you'd like it to be? That would make the most sense, wouldn't it?
Playing with .htacess to deny DMOZ.ORG is not very effective. It would prevent anyone seeing your site from DMOZ.ORG (which is a very small target audience), but it will make no difference to how Google deals with it, since Google does not get it's ODP sites from DMOZ.ORG. I might prevent an editor seeing it at ffirst glance, and it might triiger some ODP internal robots. This will make no difference, since editors expect SEOs to play games to try and feed false info or content. When researched properly the site will be found to exist and will continue to be listed. You could (as suggested) offer an editor a bribe - I need the money LOL - but to get the money I ould have to identify myself - and I cannot do that.
Thanks, but "Explore the <place name>" is a trademark of our sites. How about you use: Explore the Taj Mahal (virtual tour) as our title? That would make us happy, and be much clearer for your visitors as well. I do not see that dogmatic insistence that the DMOZ title be the same as a Graphic on the homepage of a site is justified. What you want, as honest DMOZ editors, is to provide a directory which gives the true nature of each site IN THE TITLE, as most people just scan the titles and don't read the description. This is proven by site traffic, which I enumerate elsewhere. With the shorter title, as per DMOZ, traffic was down. With the longer title, traffic was up. Therefore, the longer title was what Google's visitors wanted to see. It gave them a quick indication of a wonderful and unusual site. I know DMOZ don't want to delist our sites -- who would? Blame Google if you must; complain that they should not steal your titles. If Google stop using your titles for our sites, we would be happy to keep the DMOZ listing. Less than 1% of our visitors come from DMOZ to our sites, so we really couldn't care less about DMOZ. It's that Google are stealing your titles; that's what is harming us. And if you won't change the titles to what we want, we will just Block your links and force you to de-list us. We don't want that. Just complain to Google (as millions of others have) NOT to use DMOZ titles. Simple, really.
Wrong. Both our SERPs title and description on Google come from the DMOZ data. Try it: Google search: Taj Mahal we're down there, #9 I think: Explore The Taj-Mahal The hyphen is wrong, "The" is capitalized, and the description is over FIVE years old! ( I think that's the hundredth time I have said that in the last 20 hours )
Thanks, everyone Loves our site. It's beautiful and unusual. It's won lots of awards. We want our 5-Star rating by the Sunday Times of London (the only time they gave 5-stars to a virtual tour site) to be in the title, like it has been on Google for over two years now. Just like the cover of a book, or a movie poster: People want to see a NAME give a good review; and we Have That (verified on our site). But DMOZ don't look at the page title, you only look at the Graphic on the home page. And "Explore the <place name>" is our trademark. As stated, we would be happy with Explore the Taj Mahal (virtual tour) to differentiate us from all the travel agents, etc, on Google. THIS IS ALL ABOUT GOOGLE STEALING YOUR TITLES ! We don't want your title to appear in Google. What a bore!
I think you misunderstood what I said. 1. Blocking DMOZ.ORG will not get your site removed from DMOZ 2. and assuming it's still listed it will also not prevent Google from accessing the DMOZ listing and choosing to use that in its display of your site 3. It will not prevent all the sites that use the DMOZ data from having access to your site 4. It will prevent the small number of users of DMOZ.ORG from getting to your site
This is a very good suggestion donelson, please consider it. I think the problem is that you're failing to understand that DMOZ uses the title that's actually on the site, not in the meta tags. DMOZ doesn't care what's in the meta tags, we don't look at them and we don't consider them. You could get what you want just by changing the wording of title seen on the actual site, it would be quick and easy. The alternative would be to contact Google with your problem. We don't edit according to what Google or any other data user does with our directory. On the other hand, if we made changes to our listings at the whim of webmasters because of the way Google changes how they do things we'd be overwhelmed with update requests everytime Google makes a change. It would be impossible. I'm sorry you're bored but this is your discussion and you're the one keeping it going in multiple threads, across multiple forums. Imagine how we feel. You have to accept the reality of the situation, if you aren't willing to make the change then neither are we. We didn't name your site, you did. We only read what's there and transcribed it accurately. It's as simple as that. Really.
Can anyone can give one good reason about why a site should not be removed if the owner requests that, except the apparent stupidity in DMOZ policy and arrogance?
Yes. AOL has chosen to make a web directory. It chooses to use volunteers to make that directory. The volunteers have decided that that the site provides useful information to users of the directory. Therefore, as instructed by AOL, we create links to resources we think are useful. In doing so, we do not ask the permission of webmasters. The webmaster is not even a factor in determining if we create a link to a site. The webmaster is not a factor in determining if we delete the link either. This is the same with every site on the Internet. The owner of the site determines the content on the site. It is so simple, a first grader could understand. Neither you, nor donelson, nor anybody else can tell us what we can or cannot put on our website. (Unless it's illegal, and then it would involve the AOL lawyers getting involved.) This, of course, is the way it has to work. Your unwillingness to understand this must mean that you think that people can determine the content on a site they do not own. Then I want you to link to ODP on every page of every site you own. The link must be to the dmoz main page with an anchor text of "Open Directory Project - The Best Directory on the Internet". And if you can't figure out the html for that, it's <a href="http://dmoz.org/">Open Directory Project - The Best Directory on the Internet</a>. Thanks.
It would require an documented audit trail to prove the request was coming coming an authorized person. It's quite easy to have a situation where the current SEO/tech support person has a dispute with the actual site owner, and for revenge gets the site removed from ODP. Some months later, the site owner comes along and makes a big complaint about us removing the listing. Being an ODP editor has enough hassles as it is. I've seen similar issues where contract programmers/web designers have issues with a company and walk away with the code, or steal ownership of a URL by failing to register it to the company. Then it's legal battles as to who actually owns the code. And I get stuck reverse engineering the mess.
I just gave a good reason in my last post. Maybe in your enthiuasm to come to the aid of the oppressed you missed it? Here it is again. We don't edit according to what Google or any other data user does with our directory. Because, if we made changes to our listings at the whim of webmasters who want to tweak descriptions whenever Google changes how they do things we'd be overwhelmed with update requests everytime Google makes a change. It would be impossible. From our point of view it's the requester who's being arrogant. First he repeatedly demands the title be changed to the spammy title in his meta tag rather than what's actually on the site. Then, when he doesn't get his way he throws a tantrum in multiple threads, in multiple forums. Read what he says for yourself, he doesn't want to change the title of his site, he only wants to optimize his listing in DMOZ. We don't do that, remember? Also, what accountability and ishfish said. So now you have 3 reasons. BTW, thanks in advance for giving us the links ishfish demanded. I'm sure you wouldn't dream of being so arrogant as to deny the request.
I'm guessing that either dmoz doesn't care what WebMD thinks or has to say about it, or you have agreed to their terms. Search: WebMD.com And most of the listings appear to redirect which I think is against the guidelines?
As I mentioned in my previous post, I asked for other reasons except stupidity and arrogance. Your post seems to only confirm those reasons that were already mentioned.
All, I very much appreciate all your suggestions, however (on the resource-zone.com forum) many editors stated that they would not change our DMOZ title, no matter what we did. They were adamant that DMOZ was not going to change anything, and they were happy with the listing and title there. Are any of you who are suggesting "Explore the Taj Mahal - A Virtual Tour" actually DMOZ editors with authority to actually "officially" offer this to me? Since being a DMOZ editor is being part of a secret society, with no apparent rules as to how you work together (if at all), I am very dubious that any of you have authority. What if you disagree? This whole DMOZ thing is a mess. Secret, arbitrary and full of arrogance and bad attitude. Go on then: If I agree to compromise (NOTE: I tried this before, but was turned down) will that work? If I agree to change the graphic on our Taj Mahal site to say: Explore the Taj Mahal - A Virtual Tour will that be enough for a DMOZ editor to change our DMOZ listing? Which of you gets to do this? Why wouldn't the others block you? I would need assurances. I AM the webmaster, as proven by my adding "DMOZ: Please de-list us!" to the top of the Taj site last night. Go on; check the site to see my proof of who I am: www<dot>taj-mahal<dot>net (Although that didn't allow my site to be de-listed when I was challenged as to my identity last night. Whomever DMOZ editor could see my proof, but did not de-list us as challenged.) So, DMOZ editting cabal, it's your turn to make me an official offer, and PROVE that it is binding and official. Regards, William Donelson
Oh good grief. You poor man. You have got yourself into a terrible state. The sight of cash disappearing before your eyes seems to have thrown a big panic switch. But I have a feeling that you could be doing your site more harm than good by leaping into frantic action. I really, really do understand how desperate people can get when Google makes a change that has an impact on their site. They want to do something - anything. They hate feeling helpless. But flailing around in the dark can actually make things worse. Let's look calmly at what happened. You noticed that your site had dropped position in Google's SERPs. That happened to quite a few sites on the 27th June. You also noticed that the Google SERP was pulling the site title and description from its directory (a clone of the ODP). You assumed that the latter caused the former. In fact Google has been using ODP titles and descriptions for some time - in certain circumstances. This is not a recent change. Nor will it effect the position of your site in SERPs. It is purely presentational. It could have some effect on clickthrough rates. But it looks as though the real issue here is a drop in SERPs position.