DMOZ - Dead????

No it's not worth discussing. It has been discussed adnauseum by everyone and their dog and it's mainly a load of boring drivel spouted by disgruntled webmasters, ex editors and SEOs who think DMOZ is some magic site that exists only to get their (usually) unlistable and crappy sites an entry.

The ODP exists for it's own purpose and is carrying on to do just that. It is not dead simply because it has never been alive for the purpose that these same people believe it is for.

In fact should you want a discussion on this very subject

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20128

BTW welcome to the forum, and it's nothing personal I just get really p!$$3d off at seeing this same old argument dragged up time after time.

lol, don't worry Chris we all have pet hates. At least you apologised

Welcome to the forums darren b :wave:

Feel free to head over the Introductions forum and say hello formally

I do belive what Darren was doing is what some of us like to call 'asking a question', not dredging up an argument.

DMOZ is interested in several things, but is definitely interested in not adding to the already abundant dead links which have yet to be pruned from their directory. They would prefer, although this varies by the editor, to add sites which have staying power. This means not listing every link which comes along and preferring that a site has been on the web for a while before they list it. As they have seen the same site over and over and over, they are also more likely to list sites which are more original in their content or purpose.

Examples

My web portal Doctor Menard's Portal o' Doom will most likely not be listed by DMOZ, at least not anytime soon, as it is basically a collection of links and does not represent anything they have not seen hundreds, even thousands, of times before.

One of the editors did like my forum Creation City as he joined it. It is too new and without enough content, though, to be considered listable by DMOZ at this time. As it grows, DMOZ would be more interested in listing it, as forums come and go every day.

You basically need to concentrate on getting listed with Google and other search engines and directories before even submitting to DMOZ.

If you want to get listed with some directories, here are some which will have you listed within a week or less:

LinkProducer: New, but they have a nice, fast, layout with distinct listings.

SimplySearch4it!: Requires a reciprocal link, but they will have a site listed in less than a week.

intelseek: Way bloated with the number of listings, but they will list a site quickly, sometimes the day it is submitted, and they get crawled by other search engines.

UrgentClick.com: A website directory which has a high page rank and gets crawled regularly. They will have a site listed within a few days or even within minutes of submittal.

Here is a site, 2 Serve U.net, which offers links directly to the submission pages of search engines and directories, saving you time and prividing many you may never heard of before.

My apologies if none of this information is useful to you, as I was presuming you may have been interested in getting your site listed with directories and search engines as per your inquiry about DMOZ. Although someone should find it useful.

I am simply asking what do webmasters believe, how much do search engines rely on DMOZ ???,

Google's recently updated algorithm still gives irrelevant results with regards to listing other search engines or shopping centers, ebay features for just about everything in the sponsored links but very rarely in natural listings.

manualy edited directories are better but as stated, the editor is the person who has the power to decide, so if a search engine relys to heavely on the directory and you cant get listed then your stumped, but the infomation held on these is more relevant.

How much porn appears on listings now days, very little unless you specificaly search for it, yet as little as 5 years ago everything i searched for would give me some porn sites in the results.

anyway i shall pop over and introduce myself and be a bit more cautious in which catagory i post in the future

Cheers
Darren

DMOZ is lame and is useful to no one except SEOs. Even then I have sites listed on DMOZ and Google ignores pretty much every directory link anyway.

The reason Google over took Yahoo was because Yahoo was a slow moving directory and after all these years DMOZ still is!

A lot of editors simply add links they find whilst browsing the net and don't even take notice of the ongoing back log of links waiting for 'review.'

To answer your question Darren, search engines like DMOZ because it is human edited. Therefore, in principle, only good sites should be on it. Incoming links are essentially a vote for your site but one from DMOZ is meant to be a sooper dooper vote. Although i don't believe that is the case. What is good is that there are THOUSANDS of directorys that use DMOZ data which will help you on largely pointless search engines like Yahoo and MSN.

-Rob

I just noticed Kazaa (the P2P program with all the ads and spyware) uses DMOZ as its search engine supplier.