Editors with Conflict of Interest??

<simply put>how many abuse claims result in the site in question being removed or an editor being removed, i realise you say its small, but please quantify it</simply put>

Well, that information is not public. You may read the FAQ regarding which questions we can talk about in this Forum.

how many abuse claims result in the site in question being removed or an editor being removed

Click to expand...

But that's a different question altogether. There you're now asking for both abuse cases that were serious enough to result in removal (rather than say a warning) and also cases that pointed out one or more inappropriate listings (which may have been down to abuse, poor editing, human error, or just a site that had changed from when it was originally listed).

Given that we're a private project and you're not a member or owner, I'm not sure we're under any obligation to provide any details to you at all. It's also not obvious that we even have the particular aggregate statistics that you're asking for, even if we did decide to make such information public.

I've looked through the last 200 or so closed abuse reports, and I can confirm what motsa said, that the number of cases that identified actual editorial abuse is very small.

Wasted Energy

nicetoseeyer said:

how many submissions via the adbuse section of the odp get upheld?

Click to expand...

I have to say, that I cannot believe how much time and effort the Moderator's have put into this thread. I believe that it is a really incredible show of passion about what they do. If someone was only here for gain they would certainly not care about replying to your obviously argumentative comments, and foolish questions.

Also, as someone in the internet marketing industry, I can tell you with 100% certainty that being listed in DMOZ only has one effect on the search engines. They will list your site based on your DMOZ listing, so the title and description of your site as it is in DMOZ will display in the Search Engine Results Pages, as opposed to the one you have chose. There are plenty of sites that list number one for their competitive search terms without listing in DMOZ. Also, you will notice that not a substantial amount of traffic comes from DMOZ directly. Bottom line, submit your site, and walk away. It really doesn't matter as far as dollars and cents are concerned, and although there are exceptions to every rule, generally there are no corrupt editors. Go into the Becoming an Editor forum, and see just how difficult it is to become an editor.

If you think that your competition listing over you gives them the edge in running a business then you guys are just wrong, and are spending time on the wrong areas of business development. This behaviour is probably helping your competition succeed, as they have time to do other things, while you are fretting over trivial things.

I mean this in the most helpful way possible. If you are worried about your site succeeding promote it, but don't use DMOZ, it is not designed to be used to promote sites.

Sincerely,

Erick

Good post, Erick880. I don't have any sites anymore, but, the two I used to have were listed in the Directory, with no SEO efforts whatsoever and very few meta tags (lazy dog that I am), and neither site recieved much traffic, so, I'm pretty much convinced that a Directory listing alone, has no real affect on traffic.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that being listed in DMOZ only has one effect on the search engines. They will list your site based on your DMOZ listing, so the title and description of your site as it is in DMOZ will display in the Search Engine Results Pages, as opposed to the one you have chose.

Click to expand...

Sorry I feel thats innacurate in 2 respects.

It has 2 effects from a search engine perspective
1) It is the source of an inbound link which the search engines can follow to find the site to add to their index. Note this is unrelated to 'pagerank' - it applies to all search engines that spider the ODP.
2) It provides an alternate description that the search engine may choose to display. (see below)

This is a copy of something I wrote elswhere, but theres no point reinventing the wheel

Google chooses which of three possible pieces of information to display in the search results based on which of the three best matches the search query. The three possibilities are the META Description, the DMOZ description, and a "page snippet" which consists of one or two related (but not neccessarily connected) pieces of text from anywhere on the page.

The NOODP tag can be used to force Google to not display the DMOZ description, but you are still taking a crap shoot on which of the other two will be displayed.

Unless the DMOZ description is innaccurate (use the update listing on the category page in DMOZ to update it) or it is something that you believe will not make the searcher click on the search result, I don't think you should just blanket remove the DMOZ description from the possibilities presented to the searcher.

Microsoft has some research http://research.microsoft.com/~ryenw/papers/ClarkeSIGIR2007.pdf regarding the influence on search clickthroughs of presentational features in search results: the title, snippet and URL, with the conclusion: "The findings of our study suggest that relatively simple caption features such as the presence of all terms, query terms, the readability of the snippet, and the length of the URL shown in the caption, can significantly influence users’ web search behaviour." Make of it what you will.

Click to expand...

Gimmster,

While you did catch me being overly simplistic, I still stand by the meaning of what I said, and that is that DMOZ is not the main factor in attaining 1st page results for your key phrases. Good Content IS! And surprise , if a site owner has good content DMOZ should seek out the site, instead of the site owner begging for inclusion!

I Agree I was overly simplistic, although if you have a DMOZ listing, it is often difficult to get it not to display (I did NOT know about the noodp tag, is that just <meta name="robots" content="noodp">)?

Also,
Jean Manco an ODP editor, has stated that Google can go for more than a year without updating its directory, so if you were to get in to DMOZ in December 2007, Google may not even update their directory until 2009! I could probably suggest a million more short term options that would have a greater effect.

I understand what you are saying; I was just trying to point out the use of DMOZ for SEO is probably the most inefficient SEO tactic ever (except maybe reciprocal links)!

I understand what you are saying; I was just trying to point out the use of DMOZ for SEO is probably the most inefficient SEO tactic ever (except maybe reciprocal links)!

Click to expand...

You do realize, I hope, that if you were to post the above in any of the popular SEO/Webmaster forums, they would drag you out into an open field and stone you to death.

spectregunner said:

You do realize, I hope, that if you were to post the above in any of the popular SEO/Webmaster forums, they would drag you out into an open field and stone you to death.

Click to expand...

Yes, but unlike them I actually do SEO that is not spammy! Also, I try not to violate Google's TOS (as far a s the reciprocal links go) As for the content being a better tactic than a DMOZ listing, I think most legit firms would back me up on this. :icon_idea

Erick880
I posted because many people read these forums and leaving a half truth intact without qualifying it quickly becomes an internet 'fact' in the readers mind.

Your views on content are, I believe, correct (from a search engine, a directory, and most importantly from a user view). I don't believe I challenged that.

NOODP tag is, as you described
<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”>
which works for all engines that support the 'NODP'tag (Google and Yahoo! are the main 2)

here are yahoos to block both ODP and Yahoo directory desc displays
<META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOODP">
<META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOYDIR">

More google info can be found at
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-supports-meta-noodp-tag/

Gimmster,

Understood. Also, thanks for the noodp info, I cannot believe that I am just finding this out now. Amazing what nuggets you ODP type people know!

<person name="Erick" content="Excited">

Jean Manco an ODP editor, has stated that Google can go for more than a year without updating its directory, so if you were to get in to DMOZ in December 2007, Google may not even update their directory until 2009! I could probably suggest a million more short term options that would have a greater effect.

Click to expand...

Just because the Google directory doesn't always update promptly doesn't mean that Google's knowledge of the directory data is that far behind. I beleive that the titles and descriptions from the ODP that Google uses in SERPs are refreshed much more frequently, and it presumably spiders the public ODP pages at http://www.dmoz.org/ just like any other website, and so picks up link data from them on a pretty much continuous basis.

Those are all good points, however, I still think bad ROI. I mean all I am really pointing to here is that it is a poor time investment when there are other areas of a site to be improved to help it rank better in Google. These people think corruption is rampant, and as a result their website will fail to succeed, when it is simply not true. These people should worry about the content on their site more then the content on ANY directory.

DMOZ is a very wicked thing, but I have a hard time believing that it is a mitigating factor in web success. Bottom line DMOZ is not an SEO tool, poor ROI, investment being time.

It hould take less than 10 minutes to suggest a site to the directory, maybe 30 minutes if you have never looked at the directory and actually take some time to read the documentation and get a vague grasp of the taxonomy.

However you are correct that spending excessive time following up is something that could much more constructivly be used to improve the site both for users and search engines. (Although of course theres no use being found if your user can't use the site anyway )

wicked = evil or wicked = cool ?

Oh, no, don't tell me that the use of wicked is coming back.

That was an 'in' word in the late 1960.

I feel a flashback coming......

gimmster said:

wicked = evil or wicked = cool ?

Click to expand...

Cool, sorry originally from North East US, near a place where a car can be paaked on havad yaad

low and behold the thread nosevides into an offtopic SEO discussion. Theres a real irony there.

nicetoseeyer said:

low and behold the thread nosevides into an offtopic SEO discussion. Theres a real irony there.

Click to expand...

Yeah slightly off topic, but the overall theme between all of my posts, is that

1) People editing probably really enjoy what they are doing, and are most likely not corrupt

and

B) Fretting over why your site is not in DMOZ takes time away from actually improving your sites themselves.

There is a difference between the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law. Try not to over analyze, I am just saying put the focus on improving your websites, and it wont matter if you have a DMOZ listing or not. It is very unlikely that DMOZ generates any substantial revenue for a website (Enough to actually think that it makes a substantial difference if a competitor is listed and you are not). I mean all you can do is:

A) Make your site better (better content etc) so editors will want to include it

and

2) If you suspect abuse fill out the form. Maybe contact the guy who is offering this link scheme, and get him to guarantee a DMOZ listing or some kind of actual PROOF that there is corruption (if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there ...).

Trust me becoming an editor is not easy, I am still trying. If they were corrupt they probably would not take the time to post responses to allegations. The fact that they do should show that they care about what people think, thus care about what they are doing.

That's all I have to say about that,

Erick

B) Fretting over why your site is not in DMOZ takes time away from actually improving your sites themselves.

Click to expand...

you talking to me?...i never even mentioned having a website let alone fretting over it!

Maybe contact the guy who is offering this link scheme,

Click to expand...

wot link scheme? You lost me.

nicetoseeyer said:

you talking to me?...i never even mentioned having a website let alone fretting over it!

Click to expand...

No, I was talking in general with regards to multiple people's comments in the thread. But it is a main point to what I am saying (not SEO)

nicetoseeyer said:

wot link scheme? You lost me.

Click to expand...

From the very first post in this thread (See I DO know what the actual topic is)

TTT said:

our business was also approached many years ago to advertise on this website and we did not think at the time it was feasible and our business has grown to a point where we now have multiple websites for our various businesses.

I have contacted some area business owners that also have a web presence and they too were asked to advertise with this old DMOZ listed site and they too have refused and none of thier websites have been included within the directory.

It seems odd to me that a website that has been listed within the directory for years and has a number of advertisers on his site all appear in the DMOZ directory, And those that do not deal with this particular website are banished forever. Can it be that the Editor of this destination is also the same person that owns and operates the old DMOZ listed site I mentioned earlier?

at this point you may say, did you submit to the right area / category / ect

we can substantiate all our answers with a yes... We all live and work in the same tourist area and run the same businesses.

Click to expand...

I was basically saying, show some proof, and submit it to abuse. But the one common thing I can see from every post I have read in many threads, it that everyone (that I have read) who shouts editor abuse, and conflict of interest, claims a lot, but substantiates nothing. Its like our crocodiles here:

They have a very big mouth, but very little legs!