The Power of DMOZ?

I’ve submited various sites to DMOZ in the past.

I found that commercial ones were unlikely to be listed unless I submitted to the regional sections for their category.

I stopped submiting precisely because it was so difficult to get sites listed in major sections that properly reflected their content, in addition to the use of often limp DMOZ descriptions that Google and then MSN started to use.

I also run a number of information sites.

One of which, of no real commercial value at present, I had split over a couple of TLDs, namely for redundancy purposes after a couple of major webhosting disasters.

Recently I moved the entire content to a single domain.

I was expecting a loss of traffic - as the main section of the site was 301′ed to the other domain, I expected to see a sandboxing effect for about 6 months while Google came to terms with this.

Instead, what I’ve seen is more than a doubling of traffic, from around 15,000 uniques to almost 40,000.

It could be many factors - the search landscape is so complex these days, as different variables are accounted for. Perhaps it’s simply some form of “fresh content” boost.

However, the major difference between both domains is that one has a couple of links from DMOZ - the other has a few dozen links from DMOZ.

At present I find it hard not to see that dozens of extra long-term links from DMOZ have radically increased the trust factor of the content on the site, and hence are driving in far more traffic in from Google.

The tragedy for me as a webmaster is that it simply isn’t a commercial site and has very limited commercial development opportunities. As a site built on information, that’s precisely how it was able to get listed in various resource sections of DMOZ in the first place.

What it has done is create a new impression of DMOZ as a source of valued links.

Sure, that was always an argument - mine was that it would be better trying to find links elsewhere, then wasting time submitting to DMOZ where it mattered.

Now I figure I’m going to have to risk wasting time again, by submiting to whichever categories various other information-related sites I run may be suitable for.

It’s hard not to feel a love-hate relationship with DMOZ sometimes. I guess I should concentrate more on the love side for a while. :)