Removing a Listing
Posted October 31, 2005 | 2 comments
Sometimes for whatever reason, a site owner wants a listing removed from the Open Directory. Often no reason is given, sometimes it’s because they do not like the description provided by the editor. Now if the description is wrong, it’s reasonable to expect the editor to fix it. But usually it’s because the site owner does not like the boring factual descriptions that editors provide, and wants a hype filled keyword stuffed one.
More recently this has been affected by Google’s use of ODP descriptions, rather than extracting one from the sites or the site meta tags. Site owners do not want to have those descriptions shown in Google results. Why is Google doing this?
Google’s creation of snippets is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web. We don’t manually change sites’ descriptions, but we’re always working to make our snippets as relevant as possible.
As an editor, I take that as validation from Google that in general, editor provided descriptions are more meaningfull in search results that ones from site owners. And that means that to keep ODP useful, there is no reason to remove a site in this type of situation.
There are other reasons not to accept an email request for reamoval. Apart from anything else, we would have to go through a whole bunch of validation to decide who actually owns the site - and that’s a nightmare in itself. Nothing was ever implemented to handle that kind of issue. Sites will be removed that contain illegal content, or if a court order is issued. For example if a site is owned by two people who are having a dispute, we would not want to remove a site because one person asked for it, and then get flack from the other that wanted it left there - we have to go only by what we see at the site.
Comments
Peut-on retirer un site de DMOZ ?
La question qui est le plus souvent posée par les webmestres et les optimiseurs de sites Web pour les moteurs de recherche (référenceurs) est « Comment faire pour qu’un site soit ajouté à l’annuaire DMOZ ? », mais certains webmestres ou…
October 31, 2005 | Permalink | Reply
DmozSucks said:
Before i comment on your article, It would be fair to say that from reading the resource-zone, you seem like one of the decent and kind editors, which can be seen clearly form your responses to questions by webmasters/owners.
Now, I and most other people believe that a dmoz listing is great for any website. Ranking, links, dmoz mirrors etc… But, I find that when the editors close the door on the whole subject of removing links upon request is very disturbing. I for one would remove suck a link right away from my website if asked through: (admin/webmaster/help/support)@AffectedDomain.tld
Not that I am obligated to do it, but its a common courtesy to remove it if the owner feels that its negatively affecting his/her site. and I believe most other directories and links administrators will honor such request as well.
How could Dmoz with their often flaunted social contract and spirit of the web, code of conduct, fair and ethical editors rants… refuse to comply with such reasonable requests.
I’m sure that such requests do not mount to any serious numbers, and can be handled easier than reviews where you have to check the website inside out and decide to list or not. There are “an army” of webmasters wanting to get in, why not remove the ones who want out, I don’t think this is such a big deal. and maybe then you can be looked at as truly helping and not hindering and hurting websites. Whether you admit it or not, whether its true or not, its a common courtesy!
That’s why the voices shouting DmozSucks are increasing and this and many other unfair policies at dmoz coupled with the horrible attitudes of the Editors will make them even louder.
December 29, 2005 | Permalink | Reply