How to delete or modify my listing

I have been relentlessly trying to contact Dmoz by filling out forms and sending emails to modify or completely delete my listing. My website is www.monster-isp.com. I am listed in two places in the dmoz directory. Google is indexing the dmoz description of my site rather than my websites own title. Can someone please either entertain a new topic title for my site or remove my listings at my own request (the site owner who posted the listing origionally).

Thank you,
Ryan Skinner
www.monster-isp.com

Google themselves wrote me this letter regarding my title

Google's creation of sites' descriptions, or snippets, is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web, such as DMOZ descriptions. While we're unable to manually change descriptions for individual sites, please be assured that we're always working to make them as relevant as possible.

If you contact the webmasters who have references to your site in order to request that they change their information about your site, any changes to their sites will be recognized by our crawler after we next crawl their pages. If all of these references are removed, this may result in changes to your site's snippet. To contact DMOZ, please visit http://dmoz.org/cgi-bin/feedback.cgi?

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THis is why I am imploring someone at Dmoz to assist us, as this listing is hurting our visability within the Google index. Keep in mind i have sent in several requests to DMOZ many many weeks ago and still have seen no change in our sites description nor a reply on the status, that is why I am posting here.

Thank you for your time,
Ryan

We do not remove working, listable sites on demand.

Your title looks correct to me in both places (we use your company name, not what's in your meta tags) and the descriptions look accurate. You're not going to get the hype that is in your meta tags used as your title and/or description in the ODP so there's no point in me even pointing you to the Update listing link.

>I have been relentlessly trying to contact Dmoz...

Ah, we have a word for that. We call it "spam." Relent. Now.

You guys are such zealous aholes unbelievable really. Never ever cease to amaze us here, or to make an impression on the rest of the internet community with your righteous attitudes. All I am asking is to delete the same listing I ADDED. Dmoz no longer has our permission to list our site and we simply wish for it to be removed, please pass on my concerns to someone who actually has the authority to handle such matters. Or just flame me like is your character. If you having noticed I copied and pasted Google's own recommendation to us regarding our listing, I will forward your helpful comments to my inside guy at the Plex.

Is this forum even for helping people?

Without presenting an official legal opinion.....

My understanding is that any web site/directory/service is free to list the URL of any other site with any description it wants, providing such description is not libelous or illegal. Note that besides DMOZ, there are hundreds of other directories that will have copied that original ODP listing, and even if ODP decided to remove it [which probably would not happen unless your site became dead or useless] than those other directories for the most part will continue to list it, since the webmasters that run those sites, uusally do not update them in a timely fashion.

...the same listing I ADDED

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Unless you were an editor, you did not add it. Presumably you made a suggestion that your site be listed, and an editor chose to list it.

Note that your issue is actually with Google, not us. We do not control what Google does, and we are not likely to change our rules and guidlines, to facilitate a listing in another directory. I'm not sure why you use bad language against us, why not swear at Google?

I'm not sure why you use bad language against us, why not swear at Google?

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Did google accuse me of "being a spammer"? No your editors did.

I am simply responding with the same level of disrespect delt to my innocent question. Thank you bobrat for at least giving us the professional curtosy of a well thought aswer which is all we sought, rather than resorting to personal responses such as namecalling and accusations. Just for clarification Dmoz's official postion is that once your site is included in the directory even the site owner cannot request to have it removed?

...even the site owner cannot request to have it removed?

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Generally not - apart from anything else, we would have to go through a whole bunch of validation to prove that you actually own the site - and that's a nightmare in itself. Nothing was ever implemented to handle that kind of issue. Sites will be removed that contain illegal content, or if a court order is issued. For example if a site is owned by two people who are having a dispute, we would not want to remove a site because one person asked for it, and then get flack from the other that wanted it left there - we have to go only by what we see at the site.

I currently have a customer whose URL was hijacked. That URL is listed in many directories with the correct description of the old content - I am finding it next to impossible to get the URL changed to the new URL that matches those descriptions. The hijacked URL gets the benefit of the links, but potential customers are led to a site which has no connection with the customers business. If that URL had been listed in ODP, then getting it corrected would be a very fast process - while we do not routinely remove stes that work, we do make it a priority to correct URLs and descriptions that clearly do not match.

Dmoz no longer has our permission to list our site and we simply wish for it to be removed

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We don't need your permission to link to your site. Sorry if that seems harsh but that's the way it is.

If you having noticed I copied and pasted Google's own recommendation to us regarding our listing

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Google says what it says because they don't have the ability to affect our listings. Therefore, they can't tell you themselves that we won't remove your listing or change it to the hyped up title and description you want.

Just for clarification Dmoz's official postion is that once your site is included in the directory even the site owner cannot request to have it removed?

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That's correct. Forget what bobrat wrote about not being able to confirm the owner -- we would be doing our users a disservice to delist a usable, listable site simply because someone asked us to remove it. You can request that we correct patently false information (e.g, if we wrote that you sold green widgets or we misspelled your company name) but that's the extent of it. There's nothing wrong in the title and description that you currently have; it just isn't what you want (and what you want is against our listing guidelines).

The ODP contains a list of six million sites, of which a higher percentage are high quality entries compared with any random sampling of six million sites gleaned from anywhere else. The sites are all human reviewed, and whilst there are some dead listings here and there (darn webmasters deleting old pages, or changing URLs on us), most of the stuff is spot on.

Why would Google decide to use a description written by some third-party directory editor in preference to the one written by the webmaster and appearing on the site itself?

Have you asked yourself that question?

What quality crieria do you think Google apply in their algorithm, when they decide to use your description, or dump yours and use ours?

Work that one out, and maybe you could offer a new service to the multitudes of SERP PERPs who haven't yet figured it out. It's quite a meaty subject, you know. Google seem to have canned quite a few site descriptions in recent months.

Let's suppose I am a googlebot and I visit your site. I am trying to find a good description of the site from maybe the text on the site or the meta tags. I can't find anything but a load of meaningless keywords. What do I do...

Google gave you the answer:

Google's creation of sites' descriptions, or snippets ... takes into account ... the content of a page ... we're always working to make them as relevant as possible.

Removing our listing, even if possible, would not enable them to take into account the content of the page and find a relevant description that describes the site objectively. Try fixing the page and see what happens. It may not work but is worth a try. It sounds to me that no matter what they are not going to get what they are looking for from your site as it stands.

Thank for for some of your comments however I would like to address one extremely faulty point (unless i am misunderstanding the author)


The title "Monster ISP" says absolutly NOTHING about my site nor my service, its just our catchy quirky meaningless company name. Using DMOZ's title in the Google results over the webmasters own page is not some innovate factor that ihas been illuminated by the DMOZ staff.... its nothing more than my company name which really is meaningless in terms of relevancy and cutomers searching for our service. Are you suggesting we should build new sites call "56kdialupinternetaccessanddslprovider.com" ??? to better clarify our site and product in our initial listing/suggestion in Dmoz? I'm sorry search engine indexing is about relevancy, DMOZ is nothing more than a title (company name) and a very very bland and vague description that HARDLY even attempts to ecompass the value of what that parcitular site offers (are you kidding, in the 5 word sentences that says nothing about each specific unqie site..it hardly attempts to describe it).

The only relevancy DMOZ provides to the internet is the fact that it acts as a giant filter of sites, however it would be a very poor source to datamine for specific relevancy of individual sites. Thats why our DMOZ listing is causing us harm at the moment. We are not asking anyone to "fluff" our description or title, we are just asking if DMOZ is damaging a websites traffic, shouldnt the owner of that site (after proper verification) be allowed to request to remove his prior "suggestion"?

Why don't you just email Google if your not happy about them taking the dmoz desc/title. Worked for me!

you are probably right about Monster ISP being incorrect as a title.

you contact information shows that the real title should be:

Mailing Address ISPMonsters, INC.
P.O. Box 511 Mount Vernon, Ohio 43050

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So based on that, I would probably opt to rename the site ISPMonsters

Which is significantly less of a "catchy quirky meaningless company name"

The point being that we have a standard way of naming sites -- based on the company name. If your company name is meaningless to you, that is not a DMOZ issue.

Thats why our DMOZ listing is causing us harm at the moment.

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No, that is a figment of your imagination. If your company name is causing you harm, you have a marketing/naming problem, not a DMOZ problem. The fact that you chose a "meaningless" name for your company, does not mean we should change our editorial guidelines.

It is really as simple as that.

"If your company name is causing you harm, you have a marketing/naming problem, not a DMOZ problem. The fact that you chose a "meaningless" name for your company, does not mean we should change our editorial guidelines."

LOL have you even bothered to read this thread before responding?? The harm is caused by Google taking DMOZ's lacking information and applying that very brief insert into their index (thereby replacing our own website's title and description as authored in our site's html). Believe it or not (this may be new to you) when people run searches on Google they are not always looking for a company's name, they are simply looking for a general product (or products) to purchase, hence my websites title adds significant relevancy to my site as it associates the website only with the products with which we sell (ie what our site entails). I guess my suggestion holds water that we should rename our future domain to some long spammy title to help editors such as yourself better understand our detailed product base (and to be *initially* listed as such).

DMOZ is nothing more than a title (company name) and a very very bland and vague description

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Now you're getting it! We don't want to hype your site or anyone else's. We want to list your company by it's name and describe what it does what the site offers without fluff, hype, or glowing marketroid speak. Our goal isn't to enhance your SEO efforts but to compile a list of relevant sites with what we consider to be appropriate titles and descriptions. Under no circumstances would "Best ISP cheap isp Internet Access providers cheap dialup access" be considered a usable title or description from an ODP point of view (and it doesn't surprise me that Google doesn't seem to think so either).

motsa I entirely respect what you are saying, and I am no longer requesting to modify our listing, we simply want it deleted.

And I respect what you're saying but I've already told you that we don't delist sites on demand.

There's really no point in continuing this thread. You've asked your question, gotten your answer, and keeping this thread open would just invite continuation of the discussion which is not appropriate.

Please note that the closing of this is not an invitation to continue the discussion in another one.