MSN Now Using DMOZ!

mpkeith · 01-02-2006, 06:34 AM

Son of a… now MSN is using dmoz results too?!! I bet a lot of you noticed that your MSN results have fell off, or have totally irrelevent descriptions now.

I had a ton of #1 spots for many of my sites in MSN, but then all of a sudden a couple weeks back most of them dropped clean off! I didn’t know why this happened, so I started checking out every possible reason this could happen. Then I was looking on www.uptimebot.com and noticed that all of the top results in MSN were now listed in dmoz. What a load!

I can’t believe MSN jumped on this bandwagon. The site that has always gotten praises for bringing back the most relevent search results has just now took a major…! We already have a Google, we don't need 2 of them! Besides, I could have sworn that Google was gonna stop using DMOZ themselves soon.

I made a petition for everyone that wants the old, relevent MSN back. Please come and leave your comments, and hopefully, if we get enough, MSN will change their minds about this very foolish idea.

Mods... this is only a petition. No affiliate links, google ads or anything. And we can all use your help too. Please go leave your comments on the petition against dmoz.

krumel · 01-02-2006, 12:45 PM

It`s true.
They have the ODP description for my site.
I`m an ODP editor for romanian sections and i`m not comfortably with this.
Msn descroption for Seo.rs ( 12/31/2005 ), Articole seo ( 12/31/2005 )and ODP description for Seo.rs.
It`s not even complete.

Should a blame ODP or MSN? I`ll go for MSN.

mpkeith · 01-02-2006, 04:38 PM

Yeah, and that too... what good is your description if it's not even gonna be used? Also, dmoz doesn't seem to ever have good descriptions. They seem to just use some random text from within a site... sometimes totally irrelevent to what the main point is.

Johan007 · 01-12-2006, 02:27 AM

I disagree and agree. Dmoz descriptions provided they are upto date are massively better than the often hyped up description tag and contain no bias or full of marketing hype or lies. However I feel MSN should have stuck to Looksmarts Zeal (www.zeal.com) and use Zeal description becuase those peeps did a realy good job of descriptions and far better than Dmoz.

I, Brian · 01-16-2006, 04:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johan007

I disagree and agree. Dmoz descriptions provided they are upto date are massively better than the often hyped up description tag and contain no bias or full of marketing hype or lies.

How on earth do you justify that?

A lot of DMOZ descriptions are pretty easy to spot in commercial categories, with descriptions based on:

"Has sales and product information"

IMO a DMOZ description is going to be far worse that a site's own description.

Johan, you say descriptions lie - but it's up to users to determine the worth of the page/site itself.

There's no point getting a good rank, if people aren't encouraged to clickthrough because of a poor description. And DMOZ descriptions for commercial sites, are generally poor.

krumel · 01-17-2006, 02:05 AM

Well I, Brian ODP editors describe sites and not businesses.
Am I wrong?

OptWizard · 01-17-2006, 10:29 AM

Whats even worse is they are using OLD descriptions for DMOZ...I changed my description like 4- 5 months ago.

And since this dmoz change my site went down

I, Brian · 01-17-2006, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by krumel

Well I, Brian ODP editors describe sites and not businesses.
Am I wrong?

You really think so?

What sort of website do you think this description is for?

Quote:

Includes service details, webmaster articles, and contact details

Can you even tell me which business vertical it's in?

Of course not - it's just a poorly written description for the DMOZ description that accompanied my own internet marketing site.

More on that at Abakus: Brian Turner Requests DMOZ Delisting

Now, let's check the meta-description I use myself:

Quote:

Britecorp's internet marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO) services, focused upon Link Building and Web Hosting across different IP ranges - based near Stirling, Scotland.

It's hardly misleading to a user.

I'm not the only one to have problems - Dan Thies reported similar problems with seeing his DMOZ listing in the SERPs.

You can often tell a DMOZ description in the SERPs because of the poor quality.

I'm not trying to knock DMOZ - within it's own walled garden it's fine - but once you reuse the description data in a commercial environment, the differences in quality within the range of editors really comes to light.

krumel · 01-18-2006, 02:43 AM

Well..... when a site is listed in a proper category you know that this site has a business related to the title of that category.
There is no need to repeat the business that the category suggested in the description.

Ex: if a site is listed in Business/Business_Services/Quality_Control_and_Tracking/Consulting you can tell that the site is doing consulting services business.

The editors can edit the sites by their own will and understanding. They have an Editing Guidelines that should follow.

You may need a good description for your site...but that must be done by an editor that has Guidelines maked by ODP that must be followed.

And then...humans are easy to corrupt. If so (in odp case) just update your listing if is not proper or report an abuse.

I do not know what else to do.

microdude431 · 01-18-2006, 06:08 AM

You can blame MSN

. Soon they will be using Google for everything.

Johan007 · 01-18-2006, 07:20 AM

It’s a difficult one to call and I’Brian and I going to have to agree to disagree because it does depend on the particular website to hand. I don’t believe the people behind MSN search results are stupid enough to simply run it without investigating the general consensus. I used to love Zeal and so did Looksmart that used to form the majority of the MSN listings. The editorial guidelines of Dmoz and Zeal are very deferent but they provide grammatically correct non-hyped marketing literature with Zeal being far more detailed.