Link Value from Sites Listed in DMOZ

[Sebastian]

Hi,

Would you say that, all things being equal, the link from a DMOZ listed site is higher value than a non DMOZ site ?

I know Google factors in the backlink profile of sites that link to you, and, I could see this as a factor in their algorithm, at least in terms of Trustrank.

Is there evidence to support this theory, that this would push X amount of trustrank to your site, and be an independant algorithmic factor. Obviously, X can't be quantified, but, I'd like to see if people had significant results collecting such links from such sites.

Sebastien

[Randy Ray]

It depends on the site and what other trust factors it has (or doesn't have). Think of trust as being a + or -. Sites can do things to gain trust (like a link from a trusted site) which would be a +. Sites can also do things to lose trust (like linking to a bad neighborhood) which could be a -. So yeah, a link from DMOZ is a +, but so is a link from the Yahoo directory. (And links from some sites might be worth three +'s and linking to a REALLY bad neighborhood might be worth four or five -'s.)

Some sites have +'s and -'s. Some sites listed in DMOZ have a lot of -'s, some have a lot of +'s, and so on.

So there's no definitive answer. You should use judgment when deciding who you want links from and when deciding who you link to.

[Unknown Webmaster]

I have seen pretty good results when comparing a site of mine that has a DMOZ link compared to one that recently were removed from DMOZ. Both sites haven't been updated for quite a while.

I saw some smaller changes in the SERPs, and as far as I know nothing else were changed for ca. 1 month before (the other site were last updated 1 year ago).

I'm not talking big changes, but things like going from a #6 to a #3 on some minor keywords. The site is fx ranking #1 for a restaurants name - Above a government site that have an article that looks a lot like the one on the blog and overall are a better resource (feature article on a national directory of health information vs post on poker blog).

There could very well be other reasons for these things that I just haven't noticed, however, I think it is likely that the DMOZ listing does carry a decent amount of weight.

[Sebastian]

Good posts guys.

[Johan]

DMOZ enter sites that represent the following:

- Original, unique and valuable informational content that contributes something unique to the category’s subject.
- Contrasting points of view on major issues. The ODP attempts to cover the full breadth and depth of human knowledge, representing all topics and points of view on those topics.

SO it's natural that the link from a DMOZ listed site has higher value than a non DMOZ site.

[Michael Martinez]

DMOZ directories tend to be very large sites with huge backlink profiles. In terms of PageRank, a DMOZ site is more likely to attract a lot of PageRank than a non-DMOZ site. However, that PageRank still has to be distributed across many pages.

Some DMOZ pages seem to pass more value than others. One factor that could affect that is the number of listings on the page. In classic PageRank calculations, the distributed PageRank is divided equally among all the destination documents. Most people assume that is still true today.

Some DMOZ pages receive more inbound links than others, and so they "begin" with better PageRank than the rest of the site -- but whether that all smooths out as PageRank is recalculated is anyone's guess.

Some DMOZ pages are reindexed more often than others. If those pages are also updated more often than typical DMOZ pages they provide additional value for people needing to change their DMOZ anchor text.

Frequent re-indexing for a link warehouse page means more frequent out-crawling, which means new destinations receive better attention.

There are a lot of assumptions and half-baked theories about DMOZ and the search engines. Some comments by search engineers over the past 2-3 years have led many SEOs to assume that DMOZ doesn't pack as much punch as it once did.

Of course, fewer sites probably link to DMOZ sites now than did five years ago. A lot of people have become disillusioned with DMOZ.

If you can get a DMOZ link you probably should but be careful not to fall into the "DMOZ link value envy" trap.

[Sebastian]

Thanks for the well thought out post Michael.