Corrupt DMOZ Editor

I saw this blog note about DMOZ. There's been lots of complaining about how long it takes to get into DMOZ for the last couple of years. This isn't the first time someone has made a similar observation about changes within the directory. If you don't know what DMOZ is, here's some basic information about the Open Directory Project.

For better or worse, DMOZ is considered an authority site. Search engines view their directory as authoritative, and being listed therein counts. Unfortunately, the system is fraught with issues. It's extremely difficult to become an editor; you might be extremely knowledgeable, but you still get rejected. I know lots of people who have applied, and been rejected; one had a PH.d in his field, and there wasn't an editor for the category. He still was refused! I've tried too, I've never been approved either. I don't loose any sleep over it; I have lots of other volonteer work I can participate in.

Editors are not paid, they are volonteers. I'm convinced that most of them are well intentioned, and behave objectively Unlike the one (ones ?) referenced in the article below. While well intentioned, it is impossible to know if they are active or not. Unfortunately, many are not. You might be submitting your web site to a category, not knowing that the editor of that category checks submissions once every few months.

Should search engines ignore DMOZ since it is less relevant? Perhaps. Should editors who act maliciously be removed? Yes. Should anyone be so desparate as to act this way? NO! If you do, give your head a shake.

Anyhow, here's the commentary I saw.

Sabotaging a Competitors DMOZ Listing for Fun & Profit

The Wisdom of Weeding Out the Competitors

It's imperative to join DMOZ and sabotage your competitors. No offense intended, but if you don't join DMOZ you are ignoring a fundamental strategy for promoting your website. Your website's viability depends on you getting into DMOZ and sabotaging every single one of your competitors. If your competitors beat you to the editorship your website will be toast faster than you can say, "Am I homeless yet?"

Another corrupt dmoz editor had this to say on the subject:

"My arch competitor had a dupe content subdomain that they set up for traffic overflow and I changed their dmoz listing to the subdomain with duplicate content and it slaughtered their rankings for a couple of months.

Speaking as someone with 4 years of sabotaging experience, switch their listing from www. to non-www from time-to-time. Switch them from www.example.com to www.example.com/index.html, stuff like that."

Everybody is doing it. You should too!

I don't care if you believe me or not. The economics is enough motivation to make it happen. Here are the most common techniques for sabotaging a competitor:

Let it be
Let the site sit in the Unreviewed Queue. Don't edit it. Don't touch it. Never click on the link to visit the site. Just pretend it isn't there.

Across the universe
In the DMOZ editor dashboard you have the option to move the contributed website to a "more appropriate" category. Move it to the lowest level cat you can find, preferably a cat that is not currently edited, and one that has over sixty other websites in it. This cat must be related topically, but not really appropriate. After a year it will probably get bounced to another category and so on, and eventually end up back in your category. Wait six months or a year, then do it again.

The long and winding road
At some point you have to let in a competitor or two. Butcher the submission. Strip the title of important keywords and replace them with useless variations that nobody searches on. Mutilate the description because the last thing you want is for someone to actually click on it. A short and irrelevant description is the way to go. Don't go overboard. It has to be defensible. When your competitor's website reaches the end of the submission road, he or she will wish they never submitted.
AOL/TimeWarner own DMOZ and they treat it like the dollar chasing b***h it really is. And you should, too. Sabotaging your competitors is not simply about deleting their sites from the categories, but a more subtle and ongoing process of destroying their relevance for important keyword phrases.

You have to do what you have to do. The person who ranks at the top of the search engines sleeps better than the webmaster whose site is on page eighty six of the serps. Sabotaging your competitors is one way to get there.