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August 31, 2005

Has Your DMOZ Listing Become a Hindrance in Google?

Couldn't help notice that Google tends to be using the description meta tag a lot these days to provide descriptions for their search results.

Case in point, check this search for auto.

While there are still some cases of Google pulling the SERP description off the page copy itself, in most cases, it appears to be getting the description directly from the description meta tag. And, of course, in other cases it's the DMOZ/Google Directory listing.

Which brings me to my primary point. The DMOZ listing description copy tends to somewhat suck in terms of enticing people to click through. And since Google obviously seems to be tracking click-throughs on their search results these days (possibly with an eye to ranking more popular sites higher), is the benefit of the trusted DMOZ link enough to offset the disadvantage of not being able to dynamically craft your own customer-friendly Google SERP descriptions?

Just a thought.

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