As an internet jack-of-all-trades, I quite frequently engage in search engine optimization and link building for our client sites. A part of trying to bump up my clients’ search rankings has always been trying to get a better, more keyword-relevant listing in DMOZ open directory project. For those who don’t know what DMOZ is, here is how they describe themselves:
The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
Great idea. Why is it important for Search Marketing. Well why is anything important to a search marketer? Google. yes, Google. Google uses the results from DMOZ to drive the directory and supplemental results. That’s why it is important.
So without going into details, I spent an awful lot of time at many points over the last few years trying to get various legitimate changes made to listings (a product line mentioned in a description was no longer produced, a primary domain was changed, and some copyright and trademark status changed - all legitimate reasons I would think). But the problem is that there was never an editor for those categories. Could I volunteer? Well the site sure said I could, but apparently the powers-that-be didn’t seem to think so. See they have this application process that stopped just short of a piss test. I worked as a baggage handler for a major airline in college and had to go through less jumping through hoops. But jump through hoops I did, and eventually found myself as the editor of a much smaller category to edit (because I heard that was the way to get in, start small and move your way into the categories that are abandoned or not claimed or at least have direct line to those that may be able to make a change). Did it matter. No. Could I advance into the other categories? Nope not enough editing history, understandable. Could I get a response from an editor regarding a valid change to one of their subcategories. Nope, no explanation, just no response. Well, it got old real quick. And I stopped caring, to the point where when I got a notification that my editor status was being terminated due to lack of inactivity, I shrugged it off.
I just didn’t give a shit about DMOZ anymore.
And apparently I am not the only one who understands that DMOZ/ODP is a flawed and broken system. Google, Yahoo and MSN all agreed to support a new meta tag attribute (”noodp”) whose sole purpose is to allow a site owner to say “Hey, please don’t use that shitty DMOZ description when you are telling people about my site.”
The Big Boys have pretty much said that the system is broken, but are not getting rid of it entirely. I can’t remember who said it, but so far the explanation that makes the most sense is that they are keeping it around because on some weird level it shows support of the Open Source ideology. I have seen the equivalent several times in my professional career. Management demotes or effectively neuters an employee that they are afraid to fire for fear of Bad PR. Management hopes the employee will just go away, but that employee will always hang around as long as they can, contributing less and less value to the organization, and probably still getting paid the same.
So Google. Cut the dead weight. You Are Google. You can do what you want. We will still do what you say.
And consider this. It’s not the few self-righteous META Editors of DMOZ that set clients up with huge AdWord campaigns. It’s guys like me. And the DMOZ editors are likely too busy refining their Editorial Guidelines to publish sites that help make money selling advertising for AdSense. It’s guys like ShoeMoney.
And now we get to the reason for this post in the first place. (yes it did take long enough to get here).
As I mentioned, I do SEO for many of my clients, so I recently got back from SES 2007 in San Jose and I caught the tail end of a session on making money with contextual ads with a panel that included Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker, a very active blogger and web publisher who focuses on leveraging different aspects of the Internet for fun and profit. Now I had heard of the guy, hadn’t really checked out his site, but in the session he had some interesting things to say. And apparently he is beginning to be somewhat of a controversial character in the Web Publishing and Search Engine Marketing world -especially now and especially when it comes to DMOZ.
So when I got back from SES, I checked out his blog and whoah, boy…
Apparently he recently received an email from a DMOZ editor telling him to cough up $5000 or his listing in DMOZ would be dropped. Ha ha. Except he didn’t pay. And his site got dropped. Hmm. Not so funny. He tells the tale and many of the follow ups…
DMOZ Extortion
DMOZ Editors: come out, come out
And others are starting to see similar, questionable behavior.
The DMOZ mob strikes again…
These are some pretty damning claims, so it just reinforces my low opinion of DMOZ. I have gotten by pretty fine without it and I am sure more and more people are doing the same. At SES, there was a lot of talk about a lot of sites and tricks and I don’t remember hearing anything (positive at least) about DMOZ other than to not bother unless you had an in.
And what DMOZ doesn’t seem to realize is that the SEO guys and gals are the only ones who even gave a shit about them in the first place. And when we stop caring, no one else will.