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 Editors: come out, come out
And others are starting to see similar, questionable behavior.
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.
3 Comments
Find where he was listed in the ODP, and for how long, and how long ago, and exactly which URL was listed, and then reconcile that with the fact that his site has been banned from being listed since 2005. You can find this using TheWayBackMachine and several other sites.
I’ll give you a bit of help: it was a feed URL, and it was only for a couple of weeks at the beginning of the year 2007. That was probably a listing in error which appears to have been corrected within a few weeks. You can find more information about that if you take a few moments to look.
The owner of the site already knows that his sites are banned. How could he be threatened with removal from something that had told him more than two years previously that his sites would not be listed in? The extortion claim is fake. You’ve been suckered into his link-bait scheme.
Oh yeah. Why were his sites banned from the ODP in 2005? It is because HE offered a bribe to get them listed.
Interesting perspective, jmc. First off, thanks so much for reading. You may be right - I will fully admit that I didn’t do a lot of research investigating the circumstances involving the two bloggers mentioned, however I am not saying that they’re statements are true or accurate in anyway: (”Apparently, he received…” and “These are some pretty damning claims“). Reading these statements, just triggered a thought process on it.
The majority of my post was about my own frustrating experiences with DMOZ and how I feel it has declined in the benefit that it offers. I had a low opinion of DMOZ, as I mentioned, and these allegations reinforced it. I thought before reading any of this that DMOZ had become a useless system that could no longer support itself or fulfill its mission “to become the definitive catalog of the Web” and this did not change that perspective. It did however also prompt me to also question the integrity of the system in much the same ways that any claims, regardless of how baseless they may turn out to be, tend to make people question things (Duke LaCrosse players, for example). And when reflecting on it, I could easily see a huge potential for abuse in such a closed system where few non-compensated people have control over something that an entire market places a high value in. One only needs to look at political scandals to see this problem in action on a much larger scale. In this situation, if the guy did indeed try to bribe someone to list his site, that just further illustrates the obvious potential for corruption. And that potential for corruption and abuse combined with both the low editing activity and the sheer exponential growth of the content on the web are some of the primary reasons that Google and others need to reduce the weight that they give to any results from DMOZ.
If Google drops it’s consideration of DMOZ results, the perceived financial gain from a DMOZ listing will be lost and the system could maintain its “volunteer” status more cleanly.
I’ve been editing at Dmoz since ‘99. I didn’t get in to list my site, it was already there. The only thing I know about corruption is that editors caught in shady business are summarily canned.
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These invariably spend the next few years proclaiming they have no idea why they’re out (like joost) and (even more fun) running from one forum to another claiming dmoz is corrupt.
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As for the big $5000 extortion scam, that was plain old link bait. Nobody on the planet considers a listing worth $5000 even if we charged. “Shoe” knew bloggers would circle the wagons to protect their own. I appreciate their loyalty, it’s a good attribute, but a little fact checking wouldve kept them from wasting it.
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The guy not only didnt offer proof he could easily have supply if the tale were so… Dmoz staff offered to can the editor if he’ll provide the email, and apparently he suddenly doesn’t need to see an extortionist brought to justice. Meanwhile page after page on google refers to his website thanks to those that bought his saga. It worked.
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Much of the criticism of Dmoz I see is correct or at least close. The project has a LOT of work to do to catch up to changes on the net, and we’re working on it now. AOL just added staff and resources, and hopefully we’ll emerge a better product.
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Meanwhile the corruption thing is like the Proctor & Gamble satanist connection… a popular urban legend that will never die.