The ODP effect on search engines

Yes, well, we none of us are exactly eradicating spam.

I think spam is one of those things like poverty and hemorrhagic fevers and mortal sins -- the evils we resist not because we think we can conquer them, but because resistance is a moral or categorical imperative.

I'm so glad that you have found out the truth of what I've been telling you.

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Well. You are right in many ways and I appreciated everyone's advice. But I put an abnormal amount of work into getting there. I've got nothing to complain about, but I still believe a listing would have (past tense) helped alot - at least in the sense of having reducing the work involved.

the reason why I don't believe that Google would want to factor Alexa's data into its algorithm

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Google also pulls from the Yahoo Directory and that's a competitor. Google also pulls up alot of Alexa pages in the top 50 of most categories (in mine top 20) so it's not like it's ignoring Alexa altogether. It also assigns PageRank to Alexa pages.

only one part of there algorithm(s) my friend.
conquer one part, then onto the next.. until you get it sorted and can rest for a bit.
until a search engine like Google pulls a "mass change" to there algo... but heh, if done right you have no worries.
only improving there index against spammers, so once Google works itself out you should all be celebrating like me.

Google also pulls from the Yahoo Directory and that's a competitor. Google also pulls up alot of Alexa pages ...

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Google aims to include in its index pretty well everything its bots can reach, except for stuff it considers duplicate content and/or spam and/or sites trying to fool its algorithm. Pages with high PageRank in the Yahoo directory or Alexa have a good chance of appearing in Google's SERPs for relevant queries, just like high PR pages from other sites.

But dermotz put forward the theory that Google actually uses in its algo (as a separate factor from PR) Alexa's site popularity data i.e. how often the people using the Alexa toolbar click on a particular site. There is no evidence that Google does this and I would be amazed to learn that they do. They have their own data for how often people click on the sites that they present in their SERPs. And vastly more people use Google than use the Alexa toolbar. So if Google wanted to include click-popularity in its algorithm (and we don't know that they do), they would scarcely need to turn to Alexa for it.

Ah. I see what you are saying. Good point.