With the current controversy surrounding certain sites being removed from DMOZ it seems that Google should really take the time to regain control of what gets listed on its website.
Google hates people who try to manipulate the search results using paid links and yet is quite happy to accept recommendations for websites based on the opinions of a few editors that may or may not have been bribed.
With the technology to create a brand new directory or ditch the model altogether I find it amazing that Google continues to give credibility to DMOZ when it offers no benefit whatsoever to either Google or their users.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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I must however attest that I am a editor of dmoz and the approved submissions that I make are monitored. Yes it is possibly that one could be bribed to put a listing in, however I have yet to be approached
; could do with the money.
Dmoz is pretty much what is delicious and digg today, except more then one person assessing the weight of a submission. The monitoring process I feel works well under a volunteer capacity and demands the maintenance of good quality accurate links. If a listing is maintained properly it can get you an accurate page with the exact keywords searched phrase that has actually been overlooked by an editor. Worked well in web 1.0 and not too bad in web 2.0 either.
I really put some hard work with my website and I am really disappointed. First time, I was very enthusiast and I wanted to launch a good website since 2001. Now after I have launched it, I keep reading all kinds of SEO articles, DMOZ related articles and can’t think of the corruption on the Internet. I didn’t submited my website to DMOZ and that’s because I don’t think that I have a chance to be accepted. I think I will suffer more if I will wait a couple of months and see that I wasn’t accepted in DMOZ. Perhaps I should consider buying backlinks on important web directories. I know I should receive a typical answer like “don’t worry if you have a good content website, you will naturally receive backlinks in time”. I don’t want to have the highest position in the SERP’s but I want to know if in time I will have a chance to be included in DMOZ and to experiment a better placement in search engines.
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