Google : "we are NOT a search engine"....

[Ferre]

Ever noticed this? When you are at the Google Directory and click at "submit a site" you are directed to DMOZ and this page states :

Please note: We are not a search engine and pride ourselves on being highly selective. We don't
accept all sites, so please don't take it personally should your site not be accepted.

NOT a search engine, ok I understand this but all major search engines, like Google, copy it for their searches so at the end I guess it's DMOZ who controles if your pages are found or not.

Btw, I never had a site not listed by them, I wonder how they "filter" what sites they accept. I also wonder why they should want to have this kind of "power", I always thought an "open" webdirectory to be what it is supposed to be. I guess I was wrong. Somewhere on the line "Big Brother" stepped in.

[PhilC]

No, DMOZ doesn't control whether or not our pages are found in google and other engines. They have an input into it but that's all. It's entirely down to Google which pages they list for a given searchterm.

DMOZ doesn't accept affiliate sites, sites that offer nothing that can't be found on other sites, business-card sites and stuff like that.

DMOZ compiled an "open" directory in that its data can be downloaded by anyone. It just happens that some of the search engines chose to use it. But entries in DMOZ are not the be-all-and-end-all of rankings. I had a site dumped out of DMOZ when I added too much affiliate stuff, but it's rankings weren't affected at all.

[fishfreek]

There is also a big difference between the Google Directory and the Google search results. If you go to the Google Direcotry you will find its mostly a mirror of DMOZ's directory. You can have a site in the google seearch results and not have it in the Google Directory.

Having your site in the Google directory almost guarintees that your site wil turn up on search hits.

[I, Brian]

Certainly DMOZ isn't a Search Engine - it simply provides great food for Search Engines.