>>>Funny how the excuses roll out for dmoz, but everybody is eager to crucify Jeff.
I don't see may people here eager to crucify Jeff. All I see is Rand noting what many professional SEO consultants all ready know and many directories owners with a vested interest may not want to acknowledge -- most directories don't have much site authority and in most cases they are just a glorified link-sell under the guise of a directory that have had their home page Pagerank artificially pumped up by link rentals instead of won links.
You can get Pagerank this way and look good to the Pagerank hounds that are 2 years behind the times and still buying links based on
PR but it is very hard to win site authority with purchased links.
While Rands position, right or wrong, is a view that many SEO professionals hold I fail to see the reason to take his critical analysis of Aviva and other similar directories personal and to charge his critical analysis report or methods as "very dishonest".
>>>For the record, Jeff does have awesome organic linkage. He also has awesome non-organic linkage. He promotes like hell, and in my opinion he has respectable amount of authority.
What matrix are you using to measure site authority.
I hold that site authority can be directly measured by how well a site rankings for competitive key phrases when no off-page SEO is used.
>>>I know that isn't as much fun as crucifying the poor guy, but it is factually correct.
Now I have been wrong more than once and am always willing to be taught and have my views upgraded. What factual information have you provided that is measurable that the said directory has a respectable amount of authority (note that I have not stated that it hasn't).