Is DMOZ dead?
So much for the ODP then? An article by Phil Craven:
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The original concept of DMOZ was excellent for its time. The DMOZ site's
About page makes these statements about the concept, and about the reasons
for the directory's creation:-
"Automated search engines are increasingly unable to turn up useful results
to search queries. The small paid editorial staffs at commercial directory
sites can't keep up with submissions, and the quality and comprehensiveness
of their directories has suffered. Link rot is setting in and they can't
keep pace with the growth of the Internet."
"The Open Directory follows in the footsteps of some of the most important
editor/contributor projects of the 20th century. Just as the Oxford English
Dictionary became the definitive word on words through the efforts of
volunteers, the Open Directory follows in its footsteps to become the
definitive catalog of the Web."
But things have changed a lot since DMOZ began in the mid 1990s. Since then,
Google came along with very relevant search results, and they were kind
enough to show the other engines how to produce such relevant results. That
caused dramatic improvements, to the extent that top search engines have
been able to provide very relevant search results for some time, and they
provide a lot more of them than DMOZ is able to do.
The small paid editorial staffs at commercial directory sites still can't
keep up with submissions, but their backlogs are small when compared with
DMOZ's massive backlog. According to reports, there are over a million site
submissions that are waiting to be reviewed, and delays of several years
between submitting a site and it being reviewed are not uncommon. The
backlog problem is so huge that many editors have redefined the problem so
that it no longer exists. To them there is no backlog, because the submitted
sites are not there to be reviewed. They are merely a low priority pool of
sites that they can dip into if they want to, and some of them prefer to
find sites on their own.
Link rot (dead links) has become widespread in DMOZ through the years, and
they certainly can't "keep pace with the growth of the Web". There isn't a
single reason for the creation of DMOZ that DMOZ itself doesn't nöw suffer from.
So how come such an excellent original concept ended up with a directory
that has the same problems that it sought to solve, and on a much largėr scale?
One reason is that the Web has grown at a much faster pace than was perhaps
anticipated, and the DMOZ editors simply can't keep up. Another reason is
that there are simply not enough editors who are adding sites to the
directory. At the time of writing, the DMOZ front page boasts 69,412
editors, but that is the number of editors that they've had since the
beginning, and most of them are no longer there. A recent report stated that
there are currently about 10,000 editors who are able to edit, and that only
around 3,000 of those are active in building the directory. The word
"active" is used to describe editors who actually edit quite often, but as
little as one edit every few months is acceptable. The word doesn't mean
"busy", although some of them are.
With so few people doing anything, it isn't even possible for them to keep
up with the link rot in such a huge directory, and there's the ever
increasing problem of listings that link to topics other than what they were
listed for. It simply isn't possible for them to maintain the directory as
they would like.
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The idea of becoming "the definitive catalog of the Web" was a fine one, but
it turned out to be an impossible dream. The purpose of DMOZ is dead.
Today's search engines produce excellent results in large quantities, and
much more quickly than drilling down into a directory to find something.
So is there any value at all in the DMOZ directory? As a useful catalog of
the Web, and when compared with the major search engines, the answer is no,
although a few people do find it to be a useful research resource. For
website owners, the links to their websites that a listļng in DMOZ creatės
are useful for search engine ranking purposes, but even those are becoming
less useful as search engines improve, and seek to block out unwanted
duplicate content from their indexes.
It was a fine concept, and it looked promising for a while, but the idea of
DMOZ becoming the definitive catalog of the Web is gone. Improvements in the
search engines eclipsed its value, and the growth rate of the Web meant that
it could nevėr achieve its goal. It began with an excellent concept, and
they gave it a good shot, but it didn't work. The continuing growth rate of
the Web ensures that it can nevėr work. It continues as a good directory of
a large number of web sites, but that is all. And not many people use
directories when the search engines produce such good results, and so quickly.
About The Author
Article by Phil Craven of WebWorkShop. Phil is well-known in the world of
webmasters and search engine optimization and his views have been sought and
published by various online and offline publications.