Searching for regional sites

[mmiika]

Is it so that the path to a site in odp is not included in the search? My site is listed in http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Cambodia/Business_and_Economy/ and it is rather annoying that when I search for "Cambodia" and any terms from the description, the site is not found. E.g. I need to have the region in the description, or what?

[bobrat]

To use the ODP search properly you need to first search on Cambodia to help decide what categories are likely.

 

Then you go to http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Cambodia/ and limit the search to that category and enter the search terms.

[windharp]

ODP search is primary meant to search for categories, sites are more or less only displayed for people looking for a specific site, knowing how to find it. And the search correctly gives the Cambodia category, from where users cann drill down for sites matching their interest.

[mmiika]

I still find that is somewhat limiting. If I search for example for "cambodia ministry of tourism" I get no results, evethough there's a site called "ministry of tourism" inside http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Cambodia/Government/.

 

But ofcourse, nothing perfect... and I understand that the search isn't what dmoz is about.

 

Thanks for reply

[windharp]

Well, we hand out our data in RDF format, so everyone who wants to do so, can build his/her own search engine for it. Google has done so, as have many others. Dmoz servers are already terribly slow and search often times out, implementing a more complex approach would not do it any good.

 

Anyway, search features have been discussed over and over in this forum, no need for another go.

[nareau]

I sometimes wonder why/if anyone would ever use the DMOZ search engine. As was pointed out, Google's directory (http://www.google.com/dirhp) works great:

 

If you google the words: cambodia ministry of tourism

You get this as your first result:

 

Cambodia Tourism

Category: Regional > Asia > Cambodia > Government

Features country profile, attractions, and statistics of tourist arrivals. Also includes directory...

http://www.mot.gov.kh/ - Cached - Similar pages

 

So I'm curious: are there any end-user advantages to the DMOZ search over Google? IE, doesn't the Google Directory use exclusively the DMOZ data? Is the DMOZ search slightly more up-to-date than Google?

 

Nareau

[windharp]

The only advantage is, that ODP search (if it is not broken) usually is a bit newer than google. But that depends mainly on Google's update schedule which we can't influence. DMOZ search is normally the same state as our RDF files, so if Google really wanted to, they could minimize that difference