From the Dmoz blog published earlier this month:
I think we can all agree that the most exciting take away is that search engines love place a different value on free, human edited directories. The point is easily debatable. Perhaps a link in DMOZ is as valuable as any other link on the web or maybe it is worth more.
He also goes on to quote a recent SEO article and adds underscores to the quote he wants to stand out
Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold.
Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits.
I find it very strange for them to quote a SEO article and tell people Google gives more weight to DMOZ then other directories and even more strange to place value on that. It actually contradicts what I have heard search engineers from Google say publicly. I guess they would know though since they power the Google Business Directory.
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Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2689 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Jeremy "ShoeMoney" Schoemaker is the founder & CEO of the ShoeMoney Blog, Elite Retreat Internet Conference, & the PAR Program. In 2013 Jeremy released his #1 Amazon Best selling Autobiography titled "Nothing's Changed But My Change" - The ShoeMoney Story. Jeremy currently lives in Lincoln Nebraska with his wife and 2 daughters.
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{ 71 comments… read them below or add one }
When are ppl gonna learn.
A link is worth more if the PR of the page/domain it is linked from is realtively high. Links from PR6 sites will lift your site to a PR5 giving you better SERP.
It’s just that easy.
dmoz has a PR of 8 which is huge. It’s up there with the best of them, so getting a link from dmoz is good but not gold. you need more than ONE PR8 link to reap the benefits from it.
Um. Actually, I think far too much importance is put on TBPR, so I’m not sure it’s “just that easy”.
lol… (sorry)
did you just wake up from a ten year coma?
Wow.
Crack is bad.
Adergaard tell the kids that crack is bad. (sorry lol)
I love Shoe’s personal DMOZ story. Don’t know if he will repeat it here or not.
dk
Yes Dmoz is very popular in the weblog directories but adding your link to DMOZ is not sufficient for any weblog to have profit & audience…. What you say??
I got one of my sites listed in DMOZ in under a month, I’m selling the ebook for $99.95.
I’ll take it for $free.95
YES, DMOZ’s links are worth like gold.
Why?
1) Not only you have a link back from a high PR domain/page
BUT
2) You get thousands of links back from the directories that take the data from DMOZ. Including Google’s own one
If anyone has any hints, tips or tricks about how to get a DMOZ listing, I’m sure there are a lot of readers who would welcome the advice.
I have tried submitting our site twice a year for the last three years and still have not been listed. The site is five years old, PR6, Alexa 60k, 49k inbound links, over 1,000 unique articles about publishing online for profit …. but still no DMOZ entry!
Your site has all that. You don’t need dmoz. f**K em.
Taking into account that thousands of directories take the data from DOMZ, yes it is like gold indeed. Such directories include Google’s own among others with high PR.
Yeah it’s worth gold, when you finally get listed, months and months later.
Submit and forget with dmoz…if you can even be bothered ! I gues it only take a minute..
DMOZ listing probably have some more valuse then just a PR8 base.
hmmm DMOZ..last I heard you could kinda buy your way in,,,
Hey Shoe,,,you must know some of the best looking Seo’s….check out Dave’s blog
I was listed there but then got delisted or something. I dunno why .
haha what?
My site is listed, but not getting much love from Google.
Sooner or later DMOZ will kill itself. Google should be embarassed that they give this directory any weight anymore.
I think the DMOZ link is just one of many pieces that must be in place or it is all pointless. Not to mention in my eyes, you either have to be doing unspeakable favors for one of the editors or 2nd place in the lotto to get in.
It only takes such a long time before they list a submitted site. For my site http://www.love2poker.nl it’s already taking weeks!
Well you can laugh and heckle all you want, but the basic premises of the algorithm used by Google is just the way described above i.e. many links from credible sources ups your SERP placement.
PageRank or PR is just a way of quantifying how many links from credible sources you currently have, thereby being as-good-as-any proxy to how measure how “good” or “credible” your site content is.
So in essence, YES a link from dmoz or any other high PR sites is better than a link from junkyardcontent[dot]com with a low or not PR at all.
Tell me again what you are laughing about?
i think you just reduced the dmoz link weight with this post lol
Yes…submit and forget. If you do get listed, great. If not, no sweat. You can look at the PR’s for all those sites in the directory and see that it doesn’t have a huge bearing on a sites PR. You may get spidered easier, but then again, good blogging and pinging do just as good.
Yoursponsor.ws
A link always is valuable (unless a penalized link but this is not the case) so it won’t hurt you to spend some minutes adding your site ti DMOZ. The worse point is the time it takes them to review sites…handmade things are the best ones
Dmoz links are great if you can get them. They are so strict on editor requirements that they don’t have enough editors and listing take months to get published – if ever.
I NEVER have gotten into DMOZ for anything. They blow!
What he is trying to say, is that “Themed Natural Links” can be MUCH better than just a link from a high PR page. They are also much easier to get! Besides, PR is updated so slowly, it’s kind of BS now that Google is hand editting everything.
That is a very good comparison, but I don’t think DMOZ is really important at all nowadays. It seems so corrupt.
is that the extortion story?
Seeing AOL and Netscape on websites kinda brings back memories…
The problem is that the page where your link will be listed is not PR8. I don’t know why you guys pay so much attention to the directory PR. Each page on the directory has it’s own PR, and the one that will have your new link is PR0-PR2!
I was a Dmoz editor years ago and would have all sorts of people emailing me begging for help. I always helped when I could. I got shot down by DMOZ eventually. I didn’t do anything unethical but didn’t follow their TOS. I don’t mind seeing DMOZ fall a little now. They earned it.
I would love to have a link from DMOZ, I have submitted a few times over the years and I have not go it. yeah its from an internal page but its from several pages on their network. It can only be good and once you are on its there for ever.
So if anyone can do it for me…
I have found DMoz to be rather corrupt anyway. One of my websites (that ranks #1 in Google with out them) is continually denied listing in DMoz. The category only has 3 listings in it (not odd, it is a micro niche) and all the listings are owned by one person. I have a feeling the category editor is the owner of this category!
I have been a DMOZ editor for more than two years and can tell you that I have never seen any corruption whatsoever. In fact, some of the very hard working editors at the top go out of their way to make sure editors are doing it right.
No one is paid, and it is all volunteers, so it does take a while to get listed. But there is no need to bash the directory fwith unfounded rumors an innuendo. I have never heard SEOs speak well of DMOZ, probably because they are getting rejected often for trying to spam links.
Let’s just appreciate it for what it is. The oldest and most credible (and free) human edited directory. I think it is certainly up there with Wikipedia as a volunteer created resource.
I submited my url to DMoz almost a year ago and still have not been accepted. I am not sure if we will ever get into that directory. We do pretty okay in the search engines without it.
A link from the DMOZ is about as good as you can get!
yes, i have heard that google decided not to give much importance to dmoz listings as there was some corruption.
So what do you charge for the guaranteed submission, no ebook
I am going to share a secret for getting into dmoz. Please do not share this with everyone, as it may not work if it is abused.
So here are the steps that will give you the best chance:
1. Locate a time machine
2. Go back to 1999, start your site.
3. You are done! Back then Dmoz listed any site they could find.
Did i miss something? this chian makes no sense…
Oi vey – this is so yesterday – DMOZ’s value has dropped since people started blogging about gaming their system by becoming an editor, or bribing one….
I’ve heard that it is a bit corrupted as well. I remember a story about DMOZ removing a popular sites listing and asking for money in order for it to be re-added. I think it was at Problogger or something. I can’t say much because I don’t remember exactly.
Yes that is definitely true about the DMOZ directory and it does contradict what many people teach about web directories.
LOL nice one
DMOZ is ok. it includes valuable web sites. not at all but there is no other directory like it. and because of this its very important for google i think. but there is a point we have to think are DMOZ editors doing well everytime. maybe they are doing something for money.
i read about this from a web site but didn’t believe much of the written things. what you think?
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa. ROFL, Whoooeeee! That’s a good one. Besides actually receiving bribe requests from “editors” like yourself, there is a plethora of proof to the contrary of your statement. I’m sure there are plenty of above board and honest DMOZ editors, but please don’t tell me you’ve never seen corruption of some form.
Dmoz.. The most expensive listing directory on the web. And a crap too.. If you are lucky you get listed there after ages, or else you just have to pay the hungry editors to see your website in it.
maybe you havent noticed it as of yet. You will get, dont worry
Google is penalising all web directories, but why Dmoz is worth so much? Thats biasm
Same here. My other urls never got approved. Been year or more!
Please fine me a time machine :p
I was lucky to get listed once, but then unlucky to get delisted or something. Maybe they hated me lol
Got 4 pages listed on DMOZ, but you’re right – it takes ages. This, however, may be due to the fact that they are understaffed.
Yes, a DMOZ link is worth gold… fools gold. I assume Google will wise up and drop DMOZ completely, but have you noticed that you no longer get the directory results displayed in Google searches like you used to? It’s a step in the right direction for Google. AOL has been content tarnishing it’s rep with DMOZ, and sadly Google has followed along as well. They would do the world a service if they both wised up and either fixed or dropped DMOZ.
If you hear anything then I would also love to know, Miles
Are there any other directories anywhere near as “praised” as DMOZ? Almost seems worth creating a human edited directory to try to complement the available directories.
When it comes to PR and SEO, and everything else, there is always someone saying one thing and someone else saying another. We are all in between wondering who is telling it as it is.
~Terry
Understaffed is not the reason in my view.. its just that the staff doesnt want to do everything for free, they accept $$ to list a website(talking with experience!)
[...]have you noticed that you no longer get the directory results displayed in Google searches like you used to?[...]
Yeah, that’s true – although I must say, I haven’t seen DMOZ results displayed in G! searches already since about 4 or 5 years if not more. I always thought, that’s just because G! is transferring links from DMOZ anyway, so that they simply economize by not repeating these results. They do it in the same way with many other directories which only repeat G! results. Anyway, I agree that if they did display DMOZ results earlier and now they don’t, it certainly shows that G! does not consider these result to be very significant.
Really, DMOZ doesn’t have that much weight these days.
dmoz is a very popular and free directory. Its very difficult to be listed in the directory. Getting link with dmoz which has 8 pr and very popularly definately help you in getting good link but not in serp
If you have a link in dmoz, your pr + 2
I am trying to use DMOZ – nothing
If you get listed from DMOZ your page rank will improve —that’s for sure.
But, getting listed in DMOZ is almost impossible unless you have good luck and end up with a decent editor (not seen all the time on DMOZ).
If you check ten DMOZ categories you will find sites violating DMOZ rules in five of them.
Here is a review I made myself over “Open source” top category at DMOZ. I started my revision to find some site not complying with DMOZ guidelines. But I’ve got surprised by the number of wrong listing in there. As you can read in this article: http://blog.drk.com.ar/archives/45-DMOZ-Open-source-category-dissection.html
Contrary to what I was expecting, such major category is in very bad shape. With sites not matching the subject or abandoned for the last eight years.
UMOZ doesn’t have that much weight these days.
What’s Umoz.org?