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The Near Death of DMOZ a.k.a Open Directory Project (ODP)

December 21, 2006

DMOZ otherwise known as Open Directory almost “died” during the last two months. A six-week unscheduled outage and a history of consumer dissatisfaction, lagging editorial energy and layoffs at AOL intimated a possible demise of the Open Directory Project.

DMOZ, in my opinion, has been a den of BIAS, perpetrated by the so called volunteer “Human Editors” — I have been a victim of what I consider bias at DMOZ — This site was summarily yanked out from their listings for no tangible reason.

I am not condemning ALL DMOZ Editors wholesale, but I am convinced that there exists a “climate” that fosters abuse by competitors, biased and even bigoted editors — in an imperfect world such as ours there is bound to be some who don’t like others for all kinds of reasons, ranging from competitive bias to everything imaginable.

Numerous webmasters have complained about the backlog of sites awaiting review for inclusion, and poor title & description snippets, in addition to outright bias among many other complaints.

MSN recognized this anomaly and in May this year issued directives allowing webmasters and website owners the choice of “opting out” of Open Directory listing descriptions.

MSN stated: “Even though these human-edited descriptions provide a lot of value, with human editing may come human error, bias, descriptions getting outdated, or the editor’s text may simply not suit the webmasters who want to be represented in their own way.”

Google quickly followed in the footsteps of Microsoft and now supports the NOODP Meta-Tag.

Search Marketing Expert Jim Hedger says: “Though rumours of its death are obviously exaggerated, complaints about its demise are not. The ODP is a wonderful entity, but the power it inadvertently exerts is far greater than its ability to edit itself. Many have suggested the ODP should shut its door for good but perhaps this downtime has given its meta-editorial collective a chance to consider its role in the search community.” — Here is Jim’s take on DMOZ’s recent stumble

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under Search Engines | Leave a Comment 

Google Website Optimizer: Free Multivariate Testing

December 21, 2006

Google has unveiled the “Google Website Optimizer” which allows you to experiment with various aspects of your web pages — for example it minimizes the guesswork in landing page testing.

A “sticky” landing page that attracts clicks, retains traffic and results in conversions, is crucial for successful internet marketing. Designing a landing page that gives a favorable first impression to the user is therefore a crucial factor in your marketing strategy — The Google Website Optimizer will help you do just that — with much less guesswork.

Website Optimizer makes it easier to determine which version of your landing page users like best. Graphical reports show which page resulted in the highest conversion rate.
The data reports are displayed graphically, which makes it easy for you to tweak your site for optimal performance.

While Website Optimizer is integrated into AdWords, it tests all traffic to your site –- including traffic from your AdWords ads, Google search results and any other source of traffic to your site.

Only a small number of advertisers are being invited at this time — The tool will be opened to all Advertisers over the coming months.Take it for a test drive here: Google Website Optimizer

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under Marketing, Search Engines | Leave a Comment