DMOZ imitators

[peet]

DMOZ imitators give free one-way links

Since I submitted a site to DMOZ in December, I have had over 1200 backlinks to my site from unique websites but mostly with same IP addresses. Here are some examples:

directoryhost.info IP 70.98.54.18
up2seek.com IP 208.97.185.237
site-note.info IP 208.113.160.58
data-seek.info IP 74.52.131.210

All I have checked have PR 0 and all seem to be owned by various people in Thailand or by John Smith. They all have a design similar to Dmoz.

I haven't been accepted onto Dmoz yet. Do you think the owners of the above Dmoz imitators are buying Dmoz rejected sites or something? I didn't ask for any inclusion on any of the 1200 and I feel they are a 'bad neighbourhood' and I might get penalized for it. Any experience, suggestions, ideas?

 

[Cush]

The reason is that there are website scripts that pull results from DMOZ. I use to run a website that was listed on numerous websites such as the one you speak of. Best of luck!

 

[peet]

Cheers, Cush, I checked out a demo of one of those scripts and yes, it's like having Dmoz, and pulls up Dmoz results.

I wasn't very clear above, that those directories linking to me are like Dmoz, similar design, but they DON'T pull up Dmoz results. Instead they go to all kinds of results. I've just checked a few more, and some of them are more like Google than Dmoz and the results they return are like very poor imitations of Google results.

Whether they look like Dmoz or look like Google, the quality of the results is total crap.

How's this for a theory? Google has too much to index. So it checks out Dmoz rejections as well as its listings. All those rejections are somehow passed to those bogus directories. (1200 and counting for me, all at only 20 IP addresses). Google knows those IPs and uses them as a way of classifying websites. Any with those IPs linking to them, Google knows have been rejected by Dmoz, so are no good (in Dmoz and Google eyes). So Google robots know to visit them less, lower their page rank, sandbox them etc when they some extra headroom.

Of course, there is one big flaw with this. Dmoz editors/moderators/whatever you call them, are biased at least to the extent we all are - at least a little bit. They are also busy and I am certain they don't read the sites very closely. If they are anything like Skaffe, they will only consider sites with lots of 'features' such as a forum, a shop, audio and video widgets etc. If you have a minimalist site with small but quality content, you won't get a look in cos there's no features

So why do this? Because Dmoz is also very busy, so much so that they had to close down for a long time. So they'll get the message out that you should only submit to Dmoz if you have a top quality site with lots of features. If you fail, you get punished severely for wasting their time.

 

[Koopa]

This reminded me to submit to Dmoz, thanks :D

 

[bjornenki]

good luck getting in =x

 

[snowbird]

Of course, there is one big flaw with this. Dmoz editors/moderators/whatever you call them, are biased at least to the extent we all are - at least a little bit. They are also busy and I am certain they don't read the sites very closely. If they are anything like Skaffe, they will only consider sites with lots of 'features' such as a forum, a shop, audio and video widgets etc. If you have a minimalist site with small but quality content, you won't get a look in cos there's no features

So why do this? Because Dmoz is also very busy, so much so that they had to close down for a long time. So they'll get the message out that you should only submit to Dmoz if you have a top quality site with lots of features. If you fail, you get punished severely for wasting their time.

I am one of the editors at dmoz and it is a shame how some people feel they can spread information about something when they don't even know the truth behind it. I accept plenty of sites large and small on dmoz. It is not required that sites have a forum and other fancy features. Also dmoz did not close down because of it being busy. It closed down because there was a severe problem with the servers that powered the directory. It took so long to bring back online because the entire directory had to be transfered to new servers using what backups were available and many of the scripts for submitting and reviewing sites were severely damaged. So don't go spreading information about things you don't know the full story about.