“Is DMOZ dead?”
With the regularity of the seasons, this question appears to have rolled around again and the usual suspects are expecting an answer. So let me see what I can do about providing one.
DMOZ, or the Open Directory Project, is – in it’s own words – “the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.” At the time of writing, it had 4,606,898 sites, 83,198 editors and over 590,000 categories.
It is a juggernaut of the internet, but for some time now its detractors have been claiming it is collapsing under its own weight. And they may have a point. Even though the ratio appears manageable (1 editor for every 55 sites), the fact is not all 83,000 editors are active, and most editors are only responsible for their little corner of the directory.
The time it takes to approve individual submissions has always stuck in the craw of many a “professional” SEO; on top of which, editors very rarely provide feedback (or even an acknowledgement) to those sites which have failed to be approved. It’s easy too undersand why SEOs are boycotting the once popular directory.
That said, I would suggest that the SEO community’s relationship with DMOZ will do nothing to affect the relationship the directory has with Google. The mere nature of DMOZ – that fact that there are 4.6 million listings categorized into topic AND location – makes it undeniably important to Google’s search algorithm.
My advice to SEO’s is to set aside the ego and take the couple of minutes to submit each of their site. DMOZ isn’t the be all and end all but it certainly provides a big bump to a site’s PR when it gets listed there. DMOZ it should be a part of any serious marketeer’s campaign.
I have been a DMOZ editor since 2005 and in that time I’ve made 10′s of thousands of edits. Editing in DMOZ is a largely thankless job, and disheartening you read about the ground-swell of animosity towards the project. In some ways, it is well deserved, but you need to remember that this project is run by volunteers – there’s only so much unpaid time and effort we can commit.
So let me provide a couple of tips:
First and foremost, if you don’t want to wait to be approved, sign up and volunteer yourself. In order to get approved, don’t apply for your preferred category straight away, especially if that category is large and commercial. You are far more likely to be approved if you volunteer in a small, non-commercial category, like your local area. Once you’ve made a few edits and learned the ropes, apply for a larger category. After awhile, you’ll be able to jump to the commercial area of interest.
One more thing that I cannot stress enough – before you submit a site, read the guidelines about submitting! When an editor has to rewrite your title and description because you couldn’t be bothered taking five minutes to adhere to the rules, you’re slowing down your approval time and everyone elses. I would say I need to rewrite more than 90% of eligible submissions. Can you imagine how productive I would be if all I had to do was click the “Approve” button?
I think the bottom line is that as long as Netscape (owned by AOL) remains committed to the project (and they have stated that they are), then it’s not going anywhere. If it continues to fall out of favor with the online community, all that will happen is that the submission process will be slowed further.
The fact that DMOZ already contains the vast majority of the world’s websites for governments, schools, universities, newspapers, television networks, radio stations, banks, stock markets, churchs, hospitals, volunteer groups, emergency services, guides and directories, its importance cannot be ignored and you’d be doing yourself and your clients a disservice by dismissung it.
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