Google devalues DMOZ and Yahoo Directory

It has been reported today that Google has removed the emphasis on the Yahoo and DMOZ directories from the webmasters guidelines, stating that it was beneficial to be in directories and there was no longer any particular emphasis on any directory. So is the end of the DMOZ directory in particular?

DMOZ is an open source directory managed by humans who are volunteers and list sites themselves for free, writing personal reviews.

It can take many months to get a site into DMOZ and furthermore, once a site is in DMOZ it can be very hard to get it amended.

Sometimes the reviews can be incorrect, and then you need to try and get hold of the relevant editor to get them amended.

It has certainly had quite an effect over the years on listings as Google traditionally used the DMOZ directory as an indicator of a site’s favourites, and also given DMOZ a rating page ranking of eight, similar to the Yahoo directory. This means that marketers have traditionally concentrated on making sure that sites are listed on DMOZ in order to get a good page ranking.

Brad Callen of SEOelite.com, in his book about how to get a listing on Google within 24 hours and basically relates to having a link from a high page ranking site. Entry in DMOZ almost guaranteed a site a page ranking of four, even if the content hasn’t changed, bearing in mind the recent announcement, the traditional emphasis of being in DMOZ is probably still very important for every site wanting to do SEO work to be listed on it.

So how do I get my site listed on DMOZ? The answer is quite simple. You visit the site and find the category in which you want your site to appear. You then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the add my site URL button and enter a description. Make sure that your site is not already listed, as this can annoy the human editors and do not bombard the directory with repeated requests. Make sure you check back in a couple of months to see if the site has been listed back on your site and the content added by the human editor. There are a lot of anecdotal pieces of evidence that the site has no effect on visitor traffic at all, because no-one visits DMOZ.org to search for websites.

The only traffic you do get is the other search engines using the DMOZ directory as their own search engine, hence the need to be listed within it, particularly, traditionally, for Google, Yahoo and a host of other directories.

In summary, make sure your site is listed on DMOZ and Yahoo, but it does appear that Google is taking the emphasis of both directories over time. This may be good news for bank balances as Yahoo want £200 a year to be in their directory and this is somewhat expensive if there is no effect on search engine rankings.

Chester Web Marketing can help you with your own search engine work and web marketing online. Visit www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk or email info@chesterwebmarketing.com for further details.