The time is coming for a sanctioning body to intervene

The importance of a DMOZ listing is evident in the Google search engine. With Google having such a large market share for search, and Google being fed directory results from DMOZ - a DMOZ listing IS important.

Recently, MSN has been testing DMOZ listings for site descriptions in their search engine as well. If they roll out with this, DMOZ becomes that much more important for webmasters/seos/publishers/etc.

So big deal you say... DMOZ is a good ingredient to increase traffic to your sites, that may soon become an even better ingredient. - and now, the plot thickens.

------------------

There have been many recorded instances of DMOZ editors acting in malice to better their own positions, and the positions of their internet allies. When I say acting in malice, I am referring to the act of adding many links to internal pages (deeplinks) of either the editors own website(s), or a friend/affiliate... for personal monetary gain in one way or another.

It happens. In every orchard, you'll find a few bad apples - but read on... the orchard needs to be picked over... trees knocked down... branches shook... until there isn't a bad apple left. Then the gates need to be sealed, and those few who will be allowed to pass need to be HEAVILY monitored.

With DMOZ becoming more and more influential, larger amounts of people are going to be looking into "gaming" the system for their own personal gain above all. Thus far, the corruption within has limited itself to:

A) Deep seeded internal site links to ones own site(s)... often times dozens or even more.
B) Offering DMOZ listings with the purchase of SEO Services
C) The sale of DMOZ listings
D) The sale of editor accounts
E) The offering of DMOZ listings in exchange for other products/services.
F) The deletion of equally/more qualified sites from DMOZ by an editor for the purposes of eliminating competition.

Those 6 are the big ones that tend to rear their ugly heads the most.

Are the above six items a big deal? Hell yes they are! The problem is - they're only a big deal to you and I... because you and I are the only ones who are being adversely affected by it on the surface.

The mother of all exploits is bound to be on its way. You've probably thought about it in passing, but dismissed it as "Not Probable" or gasp... "Not Possible" ... reciting to yourself "DMOZ has things under control" repeatedly to ease the tension your wandering mind created.

Call it a conspiracy theory, or the rants of an ex-editor tyrant on a personal vendetta to destroy DMOZ, or whatever else you like. The fact of the matter is - it's a big one, and if it is not already being done... it's not far off.

It goes something like this:

E-commerce is at an all time high. As a result, many websites are turning into full blown corporations, and many of them are even being publicly traded. It would be extremely easy for a DMOZ editor to seek out companies early in thier public trading lives, and add them to the DMOZ directory... at the same time buying up some of that nice cheap stock.

Months go by, and the benefits of the DMOZ listing become apparent - and the Company in question starts receiving more traffic... generating more word of mouth... and eventually more income. The stock price of the company goes up. Mission accomplished.

---------------------------

So in summary, for those shaking their heads in confusion... or disbelief:

I believe it to be true that; A DMOZ listing is SO influential that it could potentially be used as a tool for "insider trading" in regards to the worlds stock markets.


If you disagree, please tell me why it WOULD/COULD NOT WORK.

 

LMAO - thanks I really needed the laugh.

 

Have a good laugh at that red then. Thank you for your useless post.

You must have missed:

 

me too. DMOZ is not that influential.

 

And you know this how? Please explain folks. Simply saying... "it's not that influential" is not good enough.

DigitalPoint recently made a post that shows just how influential DMOZ is. DMOZ is EXTREMELY influential - and moreso for new sites... or better yet, new "niches". Birdie, are you a DMOZ editor?

 

None of my sites are in DMOZ and I rank just fine. People really need to get over that 1 link. No other site on the planet gets so much clamour as DMOZ. Gee, should I spend a week complaining about my link on a page with 50-100 other links or go out and get a better link? What a tough choice

 

What you don't seem to understand is it is not ONE link.

It's over 200+ links per listing... and some have hundreds. Please educate yourself on what a DMOZ link actually does for a site and then come back to debate this.

 

A DMOZ link is powerful, but it won't make or break a website. If your site's success hinges on a DMOZ listing then your not going to succeed. Hope for a listing, but don't count on it or feel like a failure if it doesn't make it. It has it's place and I'm glad the DMOZ is there, but yea it could certainly handle public relations alittle better.

 

I will check something to see if it is. I can look at the major real estate markets and see how many of the #1 sites in google for their city plus real estate, which is the primary phrase that drives the most traffic from google has a dmoz listing, this would not be concrete but it would show some effect of a dmoz listing, if every major real estate market #1 site has a dmoz listing then I believe we can show how important it is. I will post the findings later.

 

Check some googleguy posts on WMW. They are devaluing the DMOZ clones, so all those "extra" links are worthless. Its just 1 link again.

 

I submitted to DMOZ well over a year ago for my business site. It was in the right category, has relevant content, and is well designed. Still not listed, so I dismissed it.

I can't see that it is that relevant anyway. It used to be when you searched for content on a search engine then you would end up on a DMOZ page. That hasn't happened to me in ages and I doubt it is just me. DMOZ itself is not ranking for search terms. I reckon most of the traffic going to DMOZ is webmasters checking their listing, not real browsers.

Its irrelevant now, and I think the search engines will devalue it more and more as time goes by as it simply does not do what it is supposed to do, give good content. IMHO.

Forget it. Move on.

Andy

 

If DMOZ is that influential and that flawed then the big players that use it to populate their own directories - AOL and Google in particular - would stop using it and the search engines would ignore it. AOL in particular owns the bloody thing and can instantly change anything it wants to at any time, including shutting down the servers and firing all the editors. And now Google has a share too so has picked up some direct influence. If people think AOL and Google are missing a trick then explain to them in volume and with clear evidence why that is and lobby them to stop using it/change it/scrap it, whatever. Wait, people have been doing that for as long as it has existed. You guys are mad at the wrong people - it isn't DMOZ that provides the benefits, DMOZ is just a hobbyist website cataloging project, it is those who use its data and over which DMOZ has no influence or control.

The fact remains that whatever the flaws DMOZ remains the only source of website data that cannot (in general) be influenced by SEO techniques or money spent on design. In a directory with 5 million links some will be stale, some may be dead or hijacked (at least until the automated systems catch up with them), and some will have been placed abusively or carelessly. Nevertheless, the overall package is better and more comprehensive than anything else that exists for the purpose it serves.

Being listed means that a site has been checked and isn't spam with an accuracy rate of 80-90% (compared to what on a typical random Google search). Not being listed means nothing whatever at all - you don't get any PR points but then you don't lose them either. There are plenty of categories within the Google clone of DMOZ data where you will find site with PR0 - surely that indicates that a DMOZ listing has no real influence or that algorythms are designed to somehow negate the PR effect for some reason.

 

I've seen some blogs covering what he says on WMW. But the latest posts there are from June.

Anyone has a link with newer posts from GoogleGuy on WMW?

 

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

 

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=262257

 

Crazy Rob has exposed the fact that he is the corrupt editor everyone was talking about!

And now he is out to get me... Help.... he is chasing me laughing like a madman!!!

 

With a bloody butcher's knife in my hand!

 

So that's why Rob is always has his eyes closed in his avatars. He's not sleeping, he's imagining nefarious schemes to take down his competitors in DMOZ. Makes more sense now!

 

To get on topic: DMOZ sure is important as it will give you at least one high PR (relevant) link. But hell, the scene you describe won't happen for sure, as DMOZ is open source and self regulating.

The problem is most people just want to submit their site's without doing much for it. In my short time as an editor I've seen some very, very, very bad descriptions/title's submitted. Go figure your site isn't listed.

The ones submitting correctly are getting punished for this as well as it will give an editor a lot of work to do. The more reason the help build dmoz, apply today! Lol.

Just my 2 cents.

P.S. Forget the last paragraph

 

Actually it's not. The source code and/or the database system are not available.

Too true. When someone submits a site and can't even get their own company name (or even the site URL) spelled correctly, it seems they really do not care that much.

One of the primary causes of delay in review are sites submitted to completely incorrect categories. Spending 3 minutes reading a category description may cause a site to be reviewed much faster.