Side Effects of a DMOZ listing
November 2nd, 2005 by Michael Gray in Google, Link Development, SEOIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Much has been said about having a listing in DMOZ, whether it’s important or not, whether it’s necessary, or how much time and effort it’s worth to get in. I was reviewing a potential clients site and I suspect the DMOZ listing may actually be doing them more harm than good.
The company has been around for a few years but is on a newly registered domain name (ugh). They are in a finance related category, but not something that’s uber competitive. They are listed in DMOZ in an appropriate category with a legitimate description. When checking I found a little over 500 backlinks, maybe a little high comparatively speaking, but not overly excessive. However when digging a little deeper some patterns started to emerge. The majority of their backlinks came from DMOZ clones, on a final tally over 450 of their links came from DMOZ clones.
This brings up the question are these poor low quality links actually affecting the companies rankings. If you proceed from the assumption that they have a neutral rating then, no harm no foul. However I suspect each of these low quality links has a negative coefficient, and when while however minor, when multiplied out 450 times, it will amount to something.
So if you’re still looking for a way to get into DMOZ, be careful, you may get what you wished for.
Sphere It
February 13th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
[...] GrayWolf made an interesting observation regarding DMOZ listings. Graywolf suspects that the large number of “low quality” links form the endless DMOZ clones could have a negative effect on your rankings. [...]