There are lot of websites which are fully or partially clones of ODP (Open Directory Project).These websites or part section of websites, which are using ODP script to reformat the data on there site are useless and they have no original new contents. It is learnt that search engine specially Google is purging or banning such kind of sites. Why search engines are against Dmoz clone sites? Is the data in them not worthwhile or are they been misused by site owner's? We will try to find our reason, but before that let us first understand all about Dmoz Directory



What is Dmoz Directory (ODP)

The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory on the web. It is owned by "Time Warner" and constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors, and is truly unique in many ways. The Open Directory, also known as DMOZ (the domain name of ODP), is a large, categorized directory of websites and pages, which is staffed by volunteers. Every website and page that is added to the directory has to be manually reviewed before it is included. Since its index is manually constructed and edited, categorization and relevancy is superior to any other index of its kind and equally as unique, is the fact that this data is open and free to the public for replication. As of July 2005, ODP had about 4.6 million listings organized into over 580,000 categories derived from the contributions of some 69,000 editors.

How is this free data been used to make Dmoz Clone?

There are a lot of ODP scripts to make clone of the ODP. These scripts enables you to add live data of the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org to your own website using a very easy to customize template based system. Users can browse and search categories of websites. These scripts that grabs live contents of the Open Directory dynamically and formats them to make your own version of the Open Directory. These are small scripts have few files to just uploaded on your server and you can get Thousands of Dmoz directory pages on your site in your own templates design. These scripts just get live data from Dmoz.org and it has no original new contents.

Does Dmoz Clone bring traffic?

Webmaster do not like Dmoz clone websites as they have not original content rather have duplicate contents and no body will like to link a site or vote a site which has duplicate contents. Most people will not even browse your directory. Most people will just browse 2-10 pages of your directory, they will just leave and never come back.

Why Search Engines are against Dmoz Clone?

There are various reasons which are explained as:

? There is no Original Content which is required to make a Quality Site.

? Duplicate contents as all scripts extract live data from Dmoz and create thousands of similar pages on the web.

? The Dmoz directory has more than 580,000 categories If thousands of site will grab the live contents from Dmoz it will results into creation of millions of similar pages which is making web a junkyard of similar pages with nothing new.

? The Dmoz clone sites has thousands of pages created on fly with no extra hardwork and lot of spammer are using it for advertising or Google adsense program

? The lot of webmaster has just created a section of Dmoz to get inbound links from thousands of pages to increase link popularity and search engine ranking

? Text link advertiser also created Dmoz clone to sell links on thousands of pages to increase artificially link popularity of text link ads buyers.

Which kind of Dmoz clone Search Engine's will Like

Search engines are concerned with presenting quality results to there users If you can modify and enhance the data retrieved from Dmoz and present in unique format it will definitely be preferred by Search Engines, Webmaster and Web Surfers. Google has got its own directory for which it has got data from Dmoz but enhanced by Google technology i.e ranking of sites on each directory page by Page Rank.

Using ODP Clone Scripts just to make simple ODP clone will get your site banned from search engines due to duplicate contents. Therefore it is advised not to use this virtually useless script on important sites or sites that rank well on search engines. Lot of ODP Clone Scripts makers sites were banned, because too many websites with duplicate content ( as they all have Dmoz clone) were linked to them. These scripts owner require there site URL to be linked at the footer as "Powered by ..." Which results into link farming or inbound links from similar pages.

Therefore if you want your site or directory to be safe and run for longer times then have original and unique contents in it which will not only make it rank but also get good traffic on your site and increase its popularity.