Feb
14th
Is dmoz dead?
Douglas Karr
According to the dmoz.org:
The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
For those unfamiliar with dmoz, it used to be a lively project - the wiki of search engines where folks could categorize sites and announce their arrival to the net. Of recent, though, I’ve submitted several of my sites on several occasions utilizing their submission process. Months later, my sites are still not posted anywhere within dmoz’s database.
A couple questions:
- Does anyone actually utilize this data?
- Is anyone still actually editing this data?
- Does this data have any impact on Google, Yahoo, or Live searches?
My guess is that it’s simply not worth it anymore to work on or with dmoz. Your opinion?
The forum for DMOZ is still pretty active, so that’s always a good place to ask questions.
In regards to your other questions:
1, Google at one point was using DMOZ information… I’m not sure if they still mix it in anymore.
2, I’ve been an editor for DMOZ for a few years now but only in certain categories.
3, is sort of answered by number 1, however doing more checking Google isn’t really pulling much from DMOZ anymore… Yahoo and Microsoft/Live search are trying to do their own thing like other search sites.
Until your post, I hadn’t looked at DMOZ in quite some time… and don’t feel bad about not getting some of your sites listed… I’m an editor and have a few of my own sites waiting for approval now… going on close to 1.5 years… so too bad I am not an editor of other categories so I could approve more stuff.
I noticed that Alexa has started using DMOZ for petching the title and description.
Google too uses DMOZ for the same and gives that higher preference than the normal description.
DMOZ however, does need to speed up a lot.
It could be a good alternative but I just don’t see it happening
DMOZ activity has drastically decreased. It is still great to have a listing in this directory, but its just too unpredictable. Instead of pulling your hair out over this free resource (which could go down again without warning) just clench your teeth and pay Yahoo! 299 for their directory listing. Traffic & rank boost are better than DMOZ.
Its a great snapshot of what were important and relevant sites years ago, but it has become a dinosaur in terms of usability. I doubt google, Yahoo or MSN, are stupid enough to still consider a listing in the dmoz as a highly important attribute to the quality of a site.
Its time to move on to more advanced projects on the web.