DMOZ Turns 10 - DMOZ Blog

DMOZ Turns 10 - DMOZ Blog

The Official DMOZ Blog has now published its vision of celebrating 10 years online. The article, written by the Editor in Chief - Bob Keating is pretty good and I am glad to see it was updated. Its a fairly long post with some interesting details, so I won’t be quoting any of it. I did still want to mention it though.

I note that there is a hint as to some of the future enhancements in the works for our data users. That bit sounds interesting and exciting, all though way over my head. Will be curious to see some of the various implementations when the come on line.

Official Blog - DMOZ Is Like Gold

The title DMOZ Is Like Gold caught my eye today. I thought to myself, thats great another “official” posting is on the blog. That’s gonna be good news, posts have been rather few and spread out lately. Then I read the post and my heart sank. The blog post was to thank another blog for ’showing DMOZ some love’ by including it favorably in a post. Unfortunately the love being shown was, misplaced and out and out wrong.

Firstly to be clear, the article that the DMOZ Blog is applauding is a direct copy of an article written by another blog a couple of weeks earlier. So we are not even officially thanking original content for the love, rather only a copy. Thats kind of ironic, but certainly not funny in the least.

Secondly, editors have long been battling the magic bullet theory. This article basically continues all of the mis-information that editors have tried to correct for a long time. DMOZ is not more important than other quality links, in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of well placed, high ranking sites have no DMOZ listing. On the other hand many listed sites in DMOZ fair poorly in search results.

Here are some other problems with the article:

1. Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold. Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits. - I have never seen any evidence to support that theory, in fact most that I would consider experts say that there is no more weight given to A DMOZ listing than any other quality link. Therefore, its good to have as many quality links as possible, but plenty of sites are very successful in search results without a DMOZ listing.
2. Find the perfect category for your site and check to see if it has an editor. If you see a link “Volunteer to edit this category” try and find another relevant location. Pages without active editors take much longer to get listed into. - Wrong. Most categories in DMOZ are without a named editor, having a named editor does not mean a faster review time. There are a couple hundred editors with permissions to edit in any given category. They are just as likely to be editing in a category without a named editor, as a category editor is to edit in one with their name on it. Suggesting a site to a category other than the most relevant category, will do the opposite. Many times an editor will find the mis-submitted site and just forward it along un-reviewed to the proper category. Thus putting it back at the bottom of the pool. In a lot of cases, the editor that finds it won’t even have permissions (or interest) in editing the category it should have been suggested. Just suggest it to the best category in the first place, thats the best course of action.
3. Once you find the perfect directory submit your site every 4-6 months until listed. If you are lucky you will get in eventually. - Brilliant <insert sarcasm>! This is the worst bit of ‘advice’ yet. Not only has it suggested that you slow down your own review time by overwriting previous suggestions (if the reviewing editor chooses, they can review sites by submission date and the new suggestions would overwrite the original one sinking the suggestion to the bottom of the pile), but it has also basically just advise you to become a directory spammer. Enough of these re-suggestions and your site will never get accepted, for it will be tagged as spam and banned from inclusion.

I realize why the DMOZ blog chose to post a message about the article. Its always nice to be shed in some good light occasionally. However this article does not show the project in a good light, instead its makes outrageous statements based on incorrect advice and further adds to the mis-information that editors have tired to combat for many years. Some corrections have been made, but frankly I wish the post was removed. That is unfortunately beyond my control, so I will continue to try and provide honest and factual information to dis-spell the horribly bad advice that the original article was giving.