7 replies to this topic

[daniel]

Just a quick question.

With a client's site, a search for their name brings their site out at the top of the results page.

However, the description under the link is from DMOZ rather than the meta name description for the site.

This is now out-of-date and a request has been made to change the description, but there is no editor for the category and like all things with DMOZ, it could take a while for any change to happen.

Now for the question! Is there a way to 'convince' Google to show the meta name description instead of the DMOZ description for the site?

Thanks in advance.

[Jill]

Yeah, sucks doesn't it? We have some other threads on the topic. I don't believe there was any conclusions as to what makes DMOZ appear or not. Try a quick forum search for the other threads, however.

[daniel]

Thanks Jill - I did have a look through, and couldn't find any definitive nswers.

We're going to try and edit the meta name description, and see if we can do anything to convince Google to use it instead. It'll be an interesting exercise if nothing else!

[Jill]

The good news is that dmoz's description showing up is keyword query dependent. That is, it doesn't show up for every keyword phrase that brings your site up, only some.

It might be that it's only doing it when you search for your site by name. In which case, it would not be any big deal.

[daniel]

You're right, it's only coming up for a few search phrases - and they are the site name.

Unfortunately, they are a well known organisation, and lots of people will be finding the site via this search. The DMOZ description is not only out of date, it also contains a typo! Good work whoever did that...

[Jill]

Ha! Dan had a similar problem which he went public with awhile back. Eventually, DMOZ finally changed it.

If you haven't already, I would recommend sending a change request to DMOZ and or asking them to remove your site all together. That would at least be better than an erroneous listing.

Just one more reason why there's no reason to waste time with DMOZ.

[tsfat_blue]

We also noticed that our Google listings = DMOZ descriptions, and our descriptions are not keyword rich like they should be (submitted before we knew much about seo.)

But rather than pointing to the uselessness of DMOZ listings, it seems to be the only thing that gets our sites any Page Rank at all - the site without a DMOZ listing is utterly invisible to Google, and has a Page Rank of 2 despite some careful seo work and a fair number of back links.

Further, I searched Google for phrases that appear in the DMOZ listing for our main site, even though they are not at all optimized on the site itself, and the site comes up in the top 3 Google results for those phrases, as opposed to coming up in the 30's for keywords that are not in the exact phrase order that appear in the DMOZ description.

Is Google reading the DMOZ listing to determine keyword relevance (gasp!)? Do you think we can get DMOZ to drop the listing any quicker than we can get them to change the description (which they refused to do, actually)? What about all those back links that use the DMOZ description with our link - is it worth while to write to them and ask them to change the description for greater keyword relevance?

[Jill]

is it worth while to write to them and ask them to change the description for greater keyword relevance?

Definitely not. They're not interested in your keywords (as they shoudn't be). DMOZ is only interested in the relevance of your site to their users.

If there's a factual error in your listing that is one thing, but if you don't like the keywords, you'd pretty much be considered a spammer if you asked them to change it.