LinkedIn
We have some clients that somehow back in the day were able to get their website listed with DMOZ.org. DMOZ has grown to be one of the most inactive and inaccurate directories that some of the engines still seem to crawl and use for their default directory listings and to show as the abstract on the SERPs. DMOZ is also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP.
MSN Search is now recognizing a new meta tag that allows you to request to opt out of showing the DMOZ description field as your search abstract listing. Why would you want to change this? DMOZ editors have been notorious in writing non-sexy decriptions for websites which will hurt your click through rate on your natural search placements.
Since most search engines aren’t even crawling or given any keyword relevancy to the meta description tags, it is in your best interest to focus the messaging on your meta description tag to be more marketing friendly to your product or brand offering.
Here is the “Say NO to DMOZ” meta tag:
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP”>
or
<META NAME=”msnbot” CONTENT=”NOODP”>
The first meta tag is for all crawlers and the second one is for the MSN Bot specifically. The change should take place once the crawler has re-crawled the page which usually from about one to four weeks.
When will someone just put a bullet in the ODP project please?
