Google search results and DMOZ editorializing?
I’ve never seen a search result page like this before. The meta text “Conservative think tank claiming to report about events and nations strategically important to the United States” doesn’t appear any where in the referenced page, which doesn’t contain any useful <META> content. Searching for that text, it looks like the text originated from the DMOZ directory listing.
Another entry from the same DMOZ list, the Kensington Review, also returns the DMOZ meta text, this time in place of the <META> text in the actual page. DMOZ says “An e-magazine of political and social commentary. When the left says the glass is half full and the right says it is half empty, Kensington suggests that it might be too big.” Kensington’s own META says “An electronic journal of political, financial and social commentary”. DMOZ is a more interesting description, but again does not originate from the content itself.
So it appears that DMOZ editors have greater influence over certain Google search descriptions than the actual sites themselves, which is not necessarily bad, but was certainly unexpected (to me). Overall I’d prefer that Google limit its editorial function to ranking and presenting the search results, and perhaps make the editorial opinions known, but not presented as definitive.
I’m not particularly familiar with the Jamestown Foundation, which is why I was searching in the first place. The DMOZ editor is clearly skeptical but I’d rather form my own opinion.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Ho John –
DMoz abstracts have been around for a while; they only show up in some cases. A site needs to have a DMoz listing, and the search query needs to be kind of generic (usually the site name or similar).
It is possible for site owners to control this behavior using the Google Webmaster Tools. This requires a (free) account, and to identify yourself as the site owner using one of several methods (e.g. drop a file having a name Google supplies in your site root directory). Once set up, you can specify that Google should not use DMoz. Of course there are many other great bits of information about how Google sees your site.
DMoz is a strange beast. One might wonder why the heck it’s still around, as it doesn’t really seem to provide anything useful. Given that it is often the view of a single person, it seems almost anti-Google in its world view.
Tom