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DazzlinDonna’s take on SEO news, tips and theories.
Google trusts DMOZ editor spam
We all know we need to get trusted links, right? And Google trusts DMOZ, right? Surely, a DMOZ editor page is even more trustworthy, right? Oh, how easily Google can be fooled!
Hat tip to Michael for discovering some juicy examples of DMOZ editor spam. I’ve taken screenshots, and saved the page source as .txt files, in case this all gets a handjob after this is reported. You can click on the links at the end to see them, but in the meantime, check this out.
First, run this search. Now, click on the editor profile link. View Source of the DMOZ editor profile page that you see (you may need to turn on Word Wrap, so you don’t accidentally miss all the spammy goodness). Now, run the Google cache: command on that page.
Want to see another one? Ok. Go to http://dmoz.org/profiles/irka.html , View Source and cache: for that page as well.
Oh my…is any site trustworthy these days? Who can the search engines really trust? Surely not government sites. I mean, those are run by…well…the government…and we all know how trustworthy they can be. (Yo, Mr. Politician, I’ll contribute to your pet project if you link to me). Definitely not .edu sites. Heck, even the Google founders’ alma mater has a history of selling spammy links on their site. What about .mil sites? Hmmm…see the bit about government sites for my thoughts on that. And now, Google’s own partner directory, DMOZ, is shown to be untrustworthy (like we didn’t already know that, right?). So, the ultimate question is…can TrustRank be trusted?
Below are links to the screenshots and txt files that I promised.
Editor Profile listing in Google
Cache of Editor Profile page
Editor Profile Page
View Source of Editor Profile Page
Second Editor Profile Page
View Source of second editor profile page
Cache of second editor profile page
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July 22nd, 2006 at 3:22 pm
I don’t think a couple of abusive souls who sign up for accounts and then add spam to their profiles is indicative of the overall trustworthiness of any site, but anyway.
I have removed the two accounts you mention, and purged the profiles. This isn’t an attempt to cover anything up, just fixing a reported problem. The alternative is to leave the abuse in place, which would be fairly rubbish.
If you come across any more please feel free to report them at http://report-abuse.dmoz.org/ and we’ll deal with them. The same goes for any editorial abuse you may spot. We greatly appreciate people who help us out by reporting abuse of our directory.
August 21st, 2006 at 5:34 am
you cannot blame dmoz for just a few editors acting on their own.
They are people like you and me, Greedy and crooked.
but i agree that if they get caught, they must be stripped of their contributions, they are the original menace to society.
August 21st, 2006 at 9:23 pm
I wasn’t really blaming dmoz, seorock, although they’ve had their fair share of corruption over the years. I’m mainly just pointing out the flaws in the Google trust system. Plus, it’s always fun to “out” a spammer.