Are You Down With ODP Descriptions?

Jul 13, 2006 - 5:11 pm 0 by

Recently there has been some concern at various forums about the use of Open Director Project (DMOZ.org) web page descriptions by some search engines as the default description used in the search engine result page listings. Simply put, if your web page is listed in ODP, the search engine may choose to use the description of that listing in its results, since they were approved by a human and are most likely accurate.

The problem is that many people have ODP listings that are outdated, and therefore do not match up nicely with the new page content. ODP is notoriously slow in responding to requests by webmasters to modify listings, so the idea came about to create a new snippet of code that would direct search engine spiders to not use the ODP description when indexing a page. Barry posted at SEW Blog today that Google is now joining MSN in recognizing the new "No-ODP" (NOODP) request.

Google has more information on this development at their Inside Google SiteMaps Blog, and the discussion is just getting started at Search Engine Watch Forums. Also see discussion when MSN implemented this in may at High Rankings Forums.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 29, 2025

Aug 29, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Spam Update, AI Mode Changes, ChatGPT Does Use Google, Search Ad News & More

Aug 29, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Updates

Google August 2025 Spam Update Impact Felt Quickly

Aug 29, 2025 - 7:51 am
Bing SEO

Bing Webmaster Tools Sitemaps Index Coverage Button Missing For Some

Aug 29, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Tests Rounded Search Results Snippet Design Again

Aug 29, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Google NMX Business Profiles May Show New Profiles Button

Aug 29, 2025 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Using Redirects to Fool Google