Hi, everybody.
It's Matt Cutts.
We are now recording two days worth of webmaster videos, so
we can answer as many as possible--
some that are really meaty, so we need a white board, and
some that are a little quicker.
So we're just knocking a bunch out.
And let's go in and look at one.
We have a question from Flo in Spain, who asks what role does
being in DMOZ play in rankings?
I see some websites in my niche ranked number one.
And the only reason is because they are in DMOZ, as their
content is, at best, poor.
Getting into DMOZ is impossible nowadays.
So why does Google still use it?
OK.
So one thing before we even get into the topic of DMOZ is
it's hard to tell sometimes why a site is ranking.
Historically, Google has the link: operator, which returns
the backlinks or some sub-sample of
backlinks to people.
But we don't show every single backlink that we know of in
response to link:, because we show that more on the
webmaster tool side.
So you can see your own backlinks, but we don't give a
full list of all the backlinks to the people who would
compete with you.
And I think that that's a pretty good balance overall.
So just because if you do link:, you might see a link
from DMOZ, and as a result, think that's why it's ranking,
It could be that there are other links, high quality
links, that you aren't seeing, that are coming from CNN, New
York Times or something like that.
So don't just automatically infer from looking at the
backlinks that you have-- either from Google, or from
Yahoo, or even a third party tool-- that that's really all
the links or all the links that Google trusts or
anything like that.
But let's get into DMOZ just a little bit.
So DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project, has
been overall really, really great in terms of being a
really good resource for people.
But it is starting to show its age a little bit.
And so there are two or three updates I can give you on how
Google thinks about DMOZ and how it treats the Open
Directory Project.
There was a version of the open
directory that Google had--
so like the Google Open Directory or something like
that-- which would take Open Directory data and add value
by sorting the stuff by page rank.
And not as many people were using that.
So even though it was one of the very first things we
introduced, other than straight web search, I think
recently we took steps to sort of turn that off.
Now it might still remain in a few properties.
For example, in some Asian countries, it's a little
slower to type.
And so it might be faster to browse through a directory.
So we don't promise we've turned that off everywhere.
But we have turned it off for a lot of different Google
properties.
The other thing that Google sometimes uses DMOZ for is
computing snippets.
So for example, if you block your page out with robots.txt,
we're not able to crawl that page.
So we might see the anchor text or the anchors, the
backlinks that point to a page.
But we can't actually crawl that page and
see what it's about.
So we don't know the title of the page or
anything like that.
And in those kinds of situations, it can be helpful
at times to rely on DMOZ.
Because if it's a well known page, then an editor of the
Open Directory Project might have said this is
what the page is.
So that could be a useful snippet.
At the same time, we always try to go back every so often
and test our assumptions.
And so, it is the case that we've been doing a test where
we say, what if we turn off using DMOZ for snippets?
And it's a little early to say whether that will break one
way or the other.
But it's the sort of thing that we do go back and test
and see whether it still make sense, compared to the
assumptions and the ways that things worked
several years ago.
OK, so the last thing to know about DMOZ is that it's not
the case that there's some special boost or some kind of
reward for being in DMOZ.
A link from DMOZ is worth the same as a link
from anywhere else.
It's just the Open Directory tends to have a little bit
higher page rank.
And so, as a result, a link from DMOZ might carry a little
more page rank.
But if you get a link from a very highly reputable source--
you know, you can get a newspaper reporter, convince
them that it's an important story, and get them to write
about you--
that can easily carry just as much or more page rank than
getting a link in the Open Directory Project.
So it used to be the case that people would have a checklist
of the links that they really wanted to get.
And it's not that there's something special or different
about the Open Directory Project.
It's a very well known directory, but it's not a
requirement.
It's not the sort of thing where you have to
get a link from DMOZ.
So if your competitor happens to have a link from the Open
Directory Project and you don't, I
wouldn't sweat about it.
I wouldn't get overly stressed.
I would think, OK, what can I do that will make sure that my
site is so compelling that people want to link to it?
And I can get those links from other sources.
Hope the helps.
And it's just a little snapshot about how we're
thinking about DMOZ and the Open Directory
Project these days.