Website found but not in category

pvdburgt · Apr 17, 2010

We noticed that information about our website was outdated and requested an update and filled in the form on DMOZ.org . We applied for a name chage from Castle Electronics to Castle Telecom.
Applied for a new description and category within DMOZ.org.

today, when I look in the index and search for "Castle Electronics" I find it in the category:

World: Nederlands: Webwinkelen: Consumentenelektronica (1)

But when I click on the category I can not find us?
Is this a BUG?
Also the changes ( name, description, category) are requested a few moths ago it still did not change.
Are there editors in Holland on this category?

pvdburgt · Apr 17, 2010

Strange when I search for Castle Telecom I can not find us.
But if look in:

Top: World: Nederlands: Webwinkelen: Consumentenelektronica: Communicatie: Mobiele Telefonie

I can see "Castle Telecom"

So I think instead of changing the entry a new entry has been made.
So the bug:

When I search for "Castle Electronics" I can find our company but when I click on the category it's not there.
When I search for "Castle Telecom" I cannot find it, but if I look in a category it's there.

Goal:

Make sure "Castle Electronics"is gone and "Castle Telecom" can be found in DMOZ.org and will be indexed by google.

nea · Apr 17, 2010

What you see when you look at the category page is the current state of dmoz.org. (You can look at the date at the bottom of the category page to see when it was last updated). The search results are not as up-to-date. There is no bug - the search function will catch up with the live directory eventually.

pvdburgt · Apr 17, 2010

Search database last updated on: Fri Mar 12 05:22:13 EST 2010

pvdburgt · May 1, 2010

But when will it be updated.
google indexes DMOZ and still has the title "castle electronics"

almost 2 months is a long time...

pvgool · May 1, 2010

As has been written before. What you see when you look at the category page is the current state of dmoz.org.

The search is always 1 to more weeks behind the actual sitiuation
Which is not a big problem as the dmoz search is only intended to find categories / subjects and not to find single websites.

Issues with Google are out of our scope. We have no influence on them at all. They update when they like to do so.

pvdburgt · May 1, 2010

The problem is that the title "Castle Electronics" is still how it's found on DMOZ.ORG and when you click on the category it's not there.
When you search for Castle Telecom you cannot find it but when you look in the new categorie it's there.

So Google indexes "Castle Electronics" because that's also how it's still found on DMOZ.org
And I can understand the time can be long but it's 2 months and 1 week ago since the last update.

I thought the site was kinda proffesional so I didn't change the meta but just the information on DMOZ.org
But maybe I can better include the following meta if it will take even longer...

<meta name="googlebot" content="NOODP">

I think it's 6 months ago since I applied for a change, and the change has been processed but half.
I would expect if somebody changed eveything I applied for he would also change it in the general database / search.

pvgool · May 1, 2010

pvdburgt said:
So Google indexes "Castle Electronics" because that's also how it's still found on DMOZ.org

I do not know if you are talking about Google Search or Google Directory.
Google Search indexes your own site and will use its title and description if it can find any that do fit their requirements.
It also indexes dmoz, but only the real pages (on which the information is correct) and not the dmoz-search.

Google Directory is a copy of DMOZ Directory. DMOZ has no influence on Google when their copy will be updated.

I would expect if somebody changed eveything I applied for he would also change it in the general database / search.

DMOZ editors do not control the search database. The issue is known internaly but we depend on resources out of our control to solve it.

Fantabublast · May 2, 2010

I agree with pvdburgt, there seems to be a bug in the ODP.

I have a couple of sites that are listed in DMOZ and will show up when you browse to the category, however, when you do a search on dmoz.org home page, those listings do not show up. Please do not confuse this with the listing not showing up on google or any other search engine, but it won't show up on DMOZ itself!

I did not feel confortable raising the issue in these fora and instead made a manual URL submission of the category listing to the search engines.

motsa · May 2, 2010

What the original poster noted is not really a bug, though as features go it perhaps isn't ideal. The dmoz.org search engine isn't updated concurrently with the actual categories (it can lag behind by several weeks or more) so a site could be listed in the category but still not be in indexed in the search; or can appear in the search results but have been deleted from the category long ago.

... instead made a manual URL submission of the category listing to the search engines.

Why? I'm curious.

Fantabublast · May 2, 2010

motsa said:
The dmoz.org search engine isn't updated concurrently with the actual categories (it can lag behind by several weeks or more) so a site could be listed in the category but still not be in indexed in the search; or can appear in the search results but have been deleted from the category long ago.

Two weeks here or there, in the grand scheme of things is perhaps nothing. But then again, that is if I take your word for gospel truth; From the original poster's experience (at least my perception of it), the synchronization may be 6 months to a year or so .... then it beggars belief as to how reliable a repository ODP really is! Then again,its run by volunteer hobbyists!

motsa said:
Why? I'm curious.

Again, I believe this was central to the original poster's querry, and suggested it as a quick fix solution while, as it turns out, ODP synchronize the category listings with the search front-end. I wonder, what better solution would you have suggested?

motsa · May 2, 2010

From the original poster's experience (at least my perception of it), the synchronization may be 6 months to a year or so

If you reread the original poster's comments, he'd submitted an update request 6 months ago. The actual update was apparently only reviewed and accepted two months ago, and that's well within the "several weeks or more" that I noted. Again, the dmoz.org search engine is not in the hands of the volunteer editors so any changes to how it functions have to come from AOL.

Again, I believe this was central to the original poster's querry, and suggested it as a quick fix solution while, as it turns out, ODP synchronize the category listings with the search front-end. I wonder, what better solution would you have suggested?

Sorry, I was asking why because other search engines don't rely on dmoz.org's search engine to update themselves -- they crawl the actual category pages. But Google's use of dmoz.org titles and descriptions seems to be based on RDF data or on its out-of-date version of the directory, not the live categories and not dmoz.org's search engine, meaning that submitting the category page to Google wouldn't have any effect on the title that comes up in Google. In that kind of a situation, it would be better for the site owner to use the NOODP tag as he suggested to force Google to use his meta tags.

Fantabublast · May 2, 2010

motsa said:
..... meaning that submitting the category page to Google wouldn't have any effect on the title that comes up in Google. In that kind of a situation, it would be better for the site owner to use the NOODP tag as he suggested to force Google to use his meta tags.

The technicalities (ODP side) may be beyond me, however, I am of the opinion that that the Title issue was a secondary one, and he correctly mulled the NOODP solution (I did not miss that).

Submitting the category listing url directly to google (with or without the NOODP metatag), will resultin it being crawled, and he (and this is my assumption) getting the link juice that he seeks. If it was MERELY for crawling, webmaster tools is far more an effective way than seeking an ODP listing (and I am sure you agree!)

motsa · May 2, 2010

If you read his posts closely, though, you'll see that he was already showing up in Google so his only issue was the name of the company, which won't be resolved by submitting the category for Google to crawl (assuming Google doesn't just ignore the request to crawl the directory in the first place, since they already do it regularly). Hence my wondering why.

Fantabublast · May 2, 2010

motsa said:
If you read his posts closely, though, you'll see that he was already showing up in Google so his only issue was the name of the company, which won't be resolved by submitting the category for Google to crawl (assuming Google doesn't just ignore the request to crawl the directory in the first place, since they already do it regularly). Hence my wondering why.

You have NOT got it yet, have you? Of-course the "OLD" name will show up (from cache?) and google crawling the (outdated?) ODP category RDF(?). By submitting the category listing, google WILL crawl the url and he will get the juice from that crawl (not to mention the correct title of the new lsiting). And yes, google will crawl it despite it regularly crawling your other files too.

motsa · May 3, 2010

I got it quite well, thank you. Clearly you're not getting what I wrote, though, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.

pvgool · May 3, 2010

I think he clearly gets what is written by us. He just wants to disagree.

Fantabublast · May 3, 2010

motsa said:
I got it quite well, thank you. Clearly you're not getting what I wrote, though, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.

It does take something to stop oneself digging themselves the proverbial (bottomless?) hole, and though you fail to admit you were wrong (well, we are not all perfect, are we?), I have to give it to you for that.

For brevity, I will recap.

1. If a site submited to ODP does not appear in the ODP Search front end but appears in the ODP Category listing, the quickest way to harvest the link juice (for ranking) from a search engine is to manually submit the ODP Category Listing Url to the search engine.

2. The reported BUG in ODP aka a site not showing in ODP Search but being listed in the category, it turns out, is a design feature (I would rather refer to it as a flaw; see quote below).

motsa said:
The dmoz.org search engine isn't updated concurrently with the actual categories (it can lag behind by several weeks or more) so a site could be listed in the category but still not be in indexed in the search; or can appear in the search results but have been deleted from the category long ago.

3. Though there is a forum thread for reporting bugs, all bugs in ODP are not to be refered to as bugs if *any* editor is aware of it else you run the risk of having your comments / discussions truncated (and on this occassion I will not mention that you are not allowed to utilise email links published on the site!).

All in all, a bit of a shambles (merely my opinion), but we still love the ODP!

The Old Sarge · May 3, 2010

pvgool said:
I think he clearly gets what is written by us. He just wants to disagree.

Actually, it seems he'll persist until he gets the answer he's looking for. It doesn't seem to matter to him that the answer he's looking for is not how things work.

As I asked him before, If you will not be satisfied with a legitimate answer, would a lie suffice?

pvgool · May 14, 2010

Some good news. The Search has been updated.

Search database last updated on: Thu May 13 20:36:29 EDT 2010

But please remember that as normal search will be one or two weeks behind the directory.
Currently the search represents the situation as it was on May 4th.

Website found but not in category

pvdburgt

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pvdburgt

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nea

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