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new dmoz announcement (no longer accepting status checks)

Discussion in 'ODP / DMOZ' started by Shoemoney, May 23, 2005.

  1. Genie

    Genie Peon

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    #141
    Yes reported dead links are removed.

    The ODP has a link checker, which does automatically move dead links to unreviewed, but it hasn't run for a while. The poor thing seems to have blown a gasket. Overwork maybe. A bunch of the more technically-minded editors are even now turning their minds to mark 2.
     
    Genie, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  2. Old Welsh Guy

    Old Welsh Guy Notable Member

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    #142
    If they removed the dead links, then how would they make money from selling expired domains that are listed in DMOZ :D
     
    Old Welsh Guy, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  3. longcall911

    longcall911 Peon

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    #143
    Yes, those that are reported in the RZ forum I referenced above are removed in a timely manner.

    In fact, Alucard is one of the more active in the task.
     
    longcall911, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  4. Genie

    Genie Peon

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    #144
    Old Welsh Guy - Expired domains get pulled out of Dmoz as fast as we can make it happen. Anyone buying them up for a high price is getting a bad bargain. Not only will they lose their Dmoz listing, but Google won't pass on the PR from previous ownership.
     
    Genie, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  5. joeychgo

    joeychgo Notable Member

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    #145
    Good :) Glad to hear something positive about DMOZ
     
    joeychgo, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  6. gworld

    gworld Prominent Member

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    #146
    First of all is not a high price, 40-100 depending on the number of pages indexed in SE and PR. I have 4 of those sites that all are pointing to different sites that tell the truth about DMOZ like this one and those are working without any problem. :D
     
    gworld, Jun 2, 2005 IP
    minstrel likes this.
  7. rob777

    rob777 Peon

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    #147
    Gworld,

    From a previous thread...

    Ref. your thread

    You keeping telling us about your anti Dmoz sites that Dmoz lists and doesn't know about...well ok. But please keep your story straight. You bought domain names that were not expired.

    I'm not trying to be a snotty editor sticking up for Dmoz, I'm just trying to get the story straight. :rolleyes:
    ---------

    Expired domains and soon coming expirations are flagged in Dmoz and require an editor to manually review the site to make sure that the website is still on topic before letting the listing stay in that category.

    Oh..and there is a difference between dead links and expired domains. The dead links are not always removed because many times they come back in a few days. And if they don't come back soon...we as editors are supposed to go look for the replacement url to fix the dead link problem. about half the time we can find the new home of the site and update the url to be accurate again. But sometimes dead is dead. And with 4+ million listings there are always alot of sites popping up dead and too few editors to keep up with quality control and new listings.

    Later,
    Rob
     
    rob777, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  8. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #148
    Quibbling won't help the issue.

    "Not expired" may have meant "still listed in DMOZ but abandoned or for sale".

    Either way, what he did was buy domains listed in DMOZ and alter the content, while remaining in DMOZ... unless I missed something. I think one of the points to be made there is that it's possible to get a DMOZ listing, and then change the site drastically while still benefitting from whatever PR accrues from the DMOZ listing.
     
    minstrel, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  9. gworld

    gworld Prominent Member

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    #149
    Hi

    I bought domains that were not expired but other people who emailed me have bought domains that were expired and I haven't heard anyone having problems.
    If they really check for expired domains, then why there are so many dead links in DMOZ?

    There are other factors also,

    1-lets assume you buy a domain and after some times, finally DMOZ gets around deleting it, what have you lost? $40, if some one can not afford $40, he should not be in business.

    2- Even if DMOZ delete the site, how many of copy sites that use DMOZ database will still have your site, since they don't upadate their database?
     
    gworld, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  10. rob777

    rob777 Peon

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    #150
    No doubt, anyone can buy a domain listed in Dmoz and change it anyway they see fit. and it would probably take a long time for editors find out.

    But expired domains was the question brought up earlier and Gworld was misleading. Expired Domains in Dmoz are a very bad investment if you are trying to get the backlinks. But you can buy listed (NON expired) domains and have your many backlinks for a long long time.

    Later,
    Rob
     
    rob777, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  11. rob777

    rob777 Peon

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    #151
    Agreed. But would you flush $40 down your toilet for fun? I wouldn't.

    If the most of the sites using the RDF Dump stay current (weekly or semi-weekly, ect.) then most of your backlinks will start to vanish. (although most likely there will be a few sites that don't update the Dmoz data on their site).


    Later,
    Rob
     
    rob777, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  12. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #152
    That's a pretty big "if". Even Google doesn't do that...
     
    minstrel, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  13. rob777

    rob777 Peon

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    #153
    Have to use words like if, almost, would, could, should, supposed, sometimes, most times, many, etc. "Almost" nothing in this world is really concrete, so to be safe I use the open ended words to cover the variations and not appear to be 100% wrong with every sentence. :D


    Later,
    Rob
     
    rob777, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  14. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #154
    I suppose. It would have been more accurate to say something like

     
    minstrel, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  15. gworld

    gworld Prominent Member

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    #155
    If you buy expired, you can probably pick it up for price of domain registration, $8-$9. I suppose everyone here can live dangerously and take a chance on $8. ;)

    Have you ever tried to use one of DMOZ RDF? let me tell you, is not easy with all the errors that's in it. The morons still don't know how to properly format a RDF file. I think most small sites, the majority, once they have it and have installed their adsense, would not do anything with it for a long time. :)
     
    gworld, Jun 2, 2005 IP
  16. rob777

    rob777 Peon

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    #156
    Ok. So if you buy an expired domain that is/was listed in Dmoz, you will only be buying it for the benefit of having the backlinks from the sites that used Dmoz data.

    Here's my thinking (remember I am new to webmastering, only 2 years of hobby involvement)

    1. I hear google penilizes for dup content. I hear they probably don't penilize directory sites that use Dmoz data, but they only count them as a backlink. I would think that none of them have a PR anywhere close to Dmoz's, so you wouldn't be any farther ahead having these backlinks over anyone of the 100 hundreds of other free directories. The only benefit I see here is the instant backlinks without having to manually submit them.

    2. I hear that Google drops the PR of a site when it expires and you would be starting fresh. So you have no benefit of PR that Dmoz may have helped the expired domain gain be expiration.

    3. If those sites did get Dmoz data only once, you would have to make sure that they got it when the expired domain was still active, before Dmoz removed it from the RDF. Plus you would not get any backlinks from any sites that begin to use Dmoz's RDF after your domain expired.

    4. You would have to hope that those sites that did get Dmoz data only once are slow in keeping their directory cleaned up. If they only got the data once and never touched the listings again...wouldn't inactivity lead Google to declease their weight as a link resource and perhaps consider it a link farm...and worst case senario, not count the links from there at all.

    5. Isn't the whole point (from a webmaster perspective) of having a Dmoz listed domain, because of the weight google gives the link from Dmoz, and the PR it gives your site?

    6. Everyone pretty much agrees that clicks from Dmoz are minimum to nill. So wouldn't the clicks be even lower for sites that use Dmoz data? So you aren't buying the expired domain for the click-through traffic from the small sites using Dmoz data. And it has been mentioned that Google doesn't value the links from these sites much because the dupe Dmoz content, so many/most/some backlinks might not even be counted, right?

    Please excuse my ramblings, but I can't see a huge advantage of buying expired domains just because they were listed in Dmoz. The only expireds I can see value in, are good names that may get alot of type-in url traffic, or once popular domains that have many links still up from other websites' link pages. But these domain names are hard to buy cheap. I see them going for $300+ on places like snapnames.com and a few other auction sites.

    Later,
    Rob
     
    rob777, Jun 3, 2005 IP
  17. gworld

    gworld Prominent Member

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    #157
    I didn't say that it will be deleted from DMOZ, I said even if it is deleted, you will still have the other directories link.

    It seems that you think that by paying $8, this should solve all your SEO problems, well it doesn't but if you compare it to the cost of hiring some one to submit your site to different directories ( I think the bargain price now is about $30 for 100 directory), it is a good deal. :)

    For a cost of registration, you get a domain that is listed in DMOZ (but may be it will be dropped in later date), you get many links from different directories and also some occasional click in traffic.

    In regard to prices that you mentioned $300+ that is advertised in different web sites, don't take it too seriously. I think many of these sellers operate under assumption that a sucker is born every minute and sooner or later one will find their listing. :)
     
    gworld, Jun 3, 2005 IP
  18. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #158
    :confused:

    They only count DMOZ as a backlink too... what's the difference whether its the annoying original or an annoying clone?

    Where did you hear that?

    No. Google doesn't work that way. And a list of related (themed) links is not a link farm.

    I think that's what Google SHOULD be doing. It may even be the case that some of it is currently being done. And eventually I think it will be done. However, I think that, unfortunately, that there is still a PR benefit from having a DMOZ listing and that benefit comes in part from all the DMOZ clones using that listing. That is one of the major problems, and about the only reason anyone still cares about whether or not s/he has a DMOZ listing or indeed ehether or not DMOZ lives or dies.

    1. because they still have a DMOZ listing when they are purchased and hence instant PR

    2. because it isn't unreasonable to expect that it will take weeks, months, or years, if ever, before DMOZ figures out that the ownership and content of the site has changed.
     
    minstrel, Jun 3, 2005 IP
  19. davert

    davert Banned

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    #159
    There's an interesting additional subthread here - the fact that click-throughs from DMOZ are negligible even for those fortunate to have an entry. I have personally found that as well, which is interesting. If it is true that the search engine is frequently out of date, that would be one reason, but it is intresting that Yahoo does provide some traffic and dmoz generally provides less, despite Yahoo's intense over-advertising and slowness.

    I wonder if anything could be done at dmoz regarding increase end-user utilization (as opposed to Google utilization) - that is, making dmoz what Yahoo used to be/should be, a portal to hand-picked sites. I would think the two best ways to do that would be --
    1) Much faster servers. Google attracted a lot of people with its speed. Altavista's grouping probably would attract more people had Altavista not slowed down.
    2) An effective, up to date search feature - I am just assuming those who criticized search are correct.

    Also, on dmoz... two ways to speed up the site approval process to keep the database current and relevant:

    1) Special low-level editors whose primary job is to weed out spam sites so regular editors have more time; they would be told to bias towards acceptance, but kill the obvious scum and rubbish which are 50% of submissions.

    2) Other special low-level editors whose primary job is to visit existing sites (or those cuaght by the robots) and verify them.

    With these in place, I think there would be time for the "paid appeals" process (which could help pay for the added servers needed for speed, or, for that matter, for paid staffers to do those two tasks) as well as submission status.
     
    davert, Jun 3, 2005 IP
  20. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #160
    I have to say that in 5+ years I don't recall ever seeing a single click-thru from DMOZ.
     
    minstrel, Jun 3, 2005 IP