Posted by : Tom Doyle in (Online Marketing) 3rd Oct, 2008
Google removes Yahoo & DMOZ recommendation from its webmaster guidelines
Tagged Under : Google, Link Popularity, Open Directory Project, SEO, Website, Yahoo
Image via CrunchBase
Google have made a slight change to their webmaster guidelines that could actually be something quite major.
The following lines were removed from their guidelines:
- Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.
- Have other relevant sites link to yours.
For years Google has highly recommended a link in Yahoo! and DMOZ. Having links in these directories was a great benefit to your sites ranking. They also constantly recommended that you built lots of relevant links to your website.
This lead to huge abuse from search engine optimisers, who would simply spamming link farms and directories. What this means for the future is debatable. Maybe Google are going to disregard directories altogether regardless of their importance currently. I doubt they will undermine link value, but I wouldn’t be surprised anymore.
We’ll just have to keep an eye on things and see what happens.
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> Having links in these directories was a great benefit to your sites ranking
Only in the eyes of so called SEO experts. People with real knowledge knew that this myth has never been a fact.
Being listed in these directories increased your chance of being found by Google (and other SE). Ofcourse all links to your site increaed that chance. Nothing has changed. Having a listing in the big directories still makes your site found by Google.
A listing in DMOZ or Yahoo does not increase your ranking in the search results and never has.
[...] Google removes Yahoo & DMOZ recommendation from its webmaster guidelines [...]
I’d have to disagree with you John.
I’ve seen it have a huge effect in SERPs for numerous clients. It’s nothing to do with it being indexed quicker. Google gave some extra weighting for having your site listed in one of these directories.
And note I said “was”. With DMOZ you couldn’t submit a site to it for nearly a year, possibly more.