As I have researched over the years on search engines and the value of directories and “valuable resources” on the web, I have found two things that are self-evident.
- DMOZ is a wonderful idea, however, it is inherently flawed.
- Wikipedia is a collection of information that is biased and should carry considerably less value than is given.
DMOZ – the Open Directory Project
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.
The fact of the matter, DMOZ is a ship with no captain and no direction. It just floats out on the web as an archaic website with no ability to get on track and become relevant again.
Here is an example:
Go to DMOZ.org and click “business” then “accounting” then “by region” then “United Kingdom.”
You will be given 170 results in this category.
Now, with the use of a search engine, a query of “business accounting united kingdom” returns:
33,900,000 results from Google.com
5,960,000 results from Yahoo! Search
2,119,000 results from Ask.com
567,521 results from MSN – Live Search
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of people interested in building a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect.
When doing research, Wikipedia claims that it is not a blog, however, the similarities still exist. The concept that “anyone” can edit information, however, this is couldn’t be further from the truth. Like DMOZ, Wikipedia should go away, or at least should not be as highly valued by search engines when ranking results.
Here is an example:
Wikipedia has an article about Google that is just less than 3,000 words.
Now, with the use of a search engine, a query of “google” returns:
792,000,000 results from Google.com
727,000,000 results from Yahoo! Search
235,380,000 results from Ask.com
66,590,409 results from MSN Live Search
Wikipedia and DMOZ are not the most valuable resource for research on the internet, search engines are. I am not implying that the results returned are more relevant, however, there is much more information from other sources that is not included in Wikipedia and DMOZ, however, because the editors of Wikipedia and DMOZ choose what is, and more importantly, what is not contained in the listing, it should not be valued any higher than any other website on the given topic (or any blog for that matter)!
I am not saying that you should immediately request your listing from either be removed, but I think that the search engines should consider the facts and devalue these sites because they are becoming less relevant and they do not appear to be working on improving themselves in any way.
What do you think, is DMOZ or Wikipedia still relevant, or have they ever?
What can they do to correct their problems to provide for a better user experience?
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I find that whatever vertical I am competing in for Google rankings–travel, health, tech or anything–Wikipedia is always there in the first few top positions and not exactly easy to knock off. Kind of frustrating at times.
Clickfire,
I can appreciate this! I battle with these same results and now YouTube has really had an affect too! The only good thing about Wikipedia is that they are marketing anything… yet!
DMOZ sucks! I have repeatedly tried to submit http://www.turnkeyproperties.org to DMOZ, I finally just gave up. If a competitor happens to be one of the moderators your screwed!
I have a Google of 4, I have great presence on most other search engines, but I do not exist on DMOZ.
DMOZ has no place in the real SEO world. It should be considered irrelevent by the other search engines.
Furthermore I operate in both Kansas and Missouri, I offer commercial and residential property mangement, sales and leasing. I even work with a large quantity of investment property.
DMOZ will allow me to choose one catagory, property management, real estate, residential or commercial. They also offer no option for serving more than one area IE Kansas and MIssouri.
I can’t immagine if I were a business that served a tri-state area like NJ, NY, CT or the Souxland in IA, NE, SD.
Ben,
I know how you feel. It seems that many of the most competitive verticals on the Internet are even tougher when websites like DMOZ seemingly hold it against many of us and the search engines place so much value on being included.
Personally, I have been intent on being listed in DMOZ for well over three years and have had no reply or consideration. It makes me feel like there is an empty landfill of quality websites that are just invisible to the editors.
That is why I would like the search engines to lower the value placed upon websites that continually fail to update content or at least better themselves like DMOZ.
Hi,
Are you insane? Only shitheads like you would be worried about the number of results rather than the relevancy of the results returned. I mean why would I bother, if a query is fetching 2 billion hits courtesy a search engine, when I cannot even browse through’em even in my wildest dreams? Makes sense?
More importantly, the search engines cannot differential between a spam and a relevant information so there’s no way can you rely on them.
I agree even Wikipedia cannot be trusted to the core, but still it’s comparatively better and trust worthy, if not superlatively
Cheers!!
Akash
Lol you’re making a conclusion by comparing two different things.
Between the dmoz category and the Google results, look at the Google results. You’ll see there’s a lot of them that aren’t companies but that provides informations.
In that category of dmoz, you’ll see *only* companies. So it’s more relevant.
For Wikipedia, I also don’t see how you can consider that an article is irrelevant because there are less words than the number of results in Google. Those results in the search engine are, for most of them, saying the same thing. Are you suggesting that Wikipedia should be much more consistent but repeat itself 50 times in the same article ?
Moreover, you’re saying that dmoz is going without a captain, and direction. Well if you interested yourself a bit more to the project before saying that kind of thing, you wouldn’t say that.
Dmoz is having a captain. His name is Bob Keating. And they have a direction, even if the next big change for the directory isn’t public yet and only editors are having access to it.
Perhaps you should read the official dmoz blog : http://dmoz.org
And the post about the staff : http://blog.dmoz.org/2009/01/08/meet-aols-dmoz-staff-team/
Damien,
First, thank you for your comment. Second, I wasn’t comparing DMOZ and Wikipedia, rather discussing two prominent websites in search engine results for multiple topics.
My remark about the Google listing in Wikipedia is only 3,000 words is relevant to the fact that there is a whole lot more information that would be included if this article explored all of what Google is, so my point is that there isn’t enough information included.
I have read the DMOZ blog, which was not active at the time of publication of this article in March of 2007. Still, little has changed in relation to the value of the content that both DMOZ and Wikipedia offers.
The DMOZ sucks. Over the last 3 years I have followed every guideline for submitting my sites and NOTHING. I tried and tried and no one will add the sites. I followed their guidelines to a tee. They are self-serving jerks.
Thank you! DMOZ is a horrible directory and should not be granted any credence with regard to Search Engine consideration. The entire premise is flawed, and the way it is designed means that it can never hope to actually keep up with the pace at which the internet expands. The sooner we forget about DMOZ the better we’ll all be.
DMOZ is still valuable. The reason you get so many results from the search engines is that search engines are not human edited. On DMOZ, volunteer editors actually go to the page and decide whether or not the content of the website is valid, unique, and worthwhile, plus it is at their discretion.
And while yes, that sucks for lots of people desperately trying to get their site listed, it’s great for those who are already listed because their sites passed inspection.
It means that the directory is exclusive, which google likes, and therefore they scrape the DMOZ dump file and use it for their own directory.
Of course comparing the number of results between dmoz and google doesn’t make any sense. They are intended for different searches. The same happens with wikipedia which isn’t a search engine but an encyclopaedia.
DMOZ sucks because its content is outdated, partial and incomplete. As the result of the idiotic behaviour of their editors.