You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2006.
MSN made a grand move today allowing webmasters the option to have their Open Directory Project descriptions removed or not displayed in MSN’s search results.
MSN, like other search engines, uses data from the Open Directory Project, and in some instances they will display the site snippet from the DMOZ directory in their search results.
What interests me most is the comment by Girish Kumar regarding the possibility of error or bias in a human edited directory such as the ODP:
“Just to give some background, the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org is a repository of millions of human-edited descriptions. Even though these human-edited descriptions provide a lot of value, with human editing may come human error, bias, descriptions getting outdated, or the editor’s text may simply not suit the webmasters who want to be represented in their own way.”
To opt-out all you need to do is add a meta robots tag:
META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP”
META NAME=”msnbot” CONTENT=”NOODP”
While MSN is the only search engine to currently offer this option, it would be nice to see others follow their lead. This is definitely a good thing.
Read more in MSN Search’s WebLog
Copyright Infringement
What is copyright infringement? According to Wikipedia, it is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it.
As the web grows this seems to happen more than we’d like to think about - you publish your work online only to find that your intellectual property is being used on someone else’s web site verbatim, or as a derivative work, or even distributed freely to others for their own benefit, financial or otherwise.
So what can you do about copyright infringement?
Ever browse the Google Directory? I enjoy how they have the listings ordered by PageRank™ as opposed to alphabetically, but I’ve always wondered about the PageRank bar in front of the listings.
They are different from the PageRank displayed on Google’s Toolbar and there are no values assigned, so you can’t mouseover the bar to see if it’s a PageRank 6 or 7, or whatever it may be.
Clicking on one of the PageRank bars takes you to an explanation about the green bars:
Web Pages Ordered by PageRank
Unlike other directories that can only list web pages alphabetically regardless of how good they are, the web pages in the Google directory are ordered according to Google’s patented PageRank™ technology. This means that the most relevant and highly-regarded sites on any topic are listed first … not buried deep within a list of other pages. You can read more about PageRank and how it works by clicking here.
What do the horizontal green bars mean?
The green ratings bars are a measure of the importance of a web page, as determined by Google’s patented PageRank technology. These PageRank bars tell you at a glance whether other people on the web consider a page to be a high-quality site worth checking out. Google itself does not evaluate or endorse websites. Rather, we measure what others on the web feel is important enough to deserve a link. And because Google does not accept payment for placement within our results, the information you see when you conduct a search is based on totally objective criteria.
What I found interesting in this explanation was that the display is supposed to indicate what other people on the web feel is important and that Google doesn’t evaluate or endorse websites.