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human-edited descriptions provide a lot of value, with human editing may come human error, bias, descriptions getting outdated, or the editor’s text may simply not suit the webmasters who want to be represented in their own way.”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