Is DMOZ dead?

Read this article this morning. Thought about the sites I submitted months and months ago and still aren't in - I know many others in the same boat.

http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/sep/16prt.html

Thoughts?

It must be dead since Phil wrote it and he's an expert.

In all seriousness, the majority of so called SEO experts do not understand DMOZ and how it works or what it's aim is. Others intentiolnally mislead. Several of them are ex-ediitors, and some of them were kicked out and they have a grudge to settle. (Phil is actually ok, but he just does not think much of DMOZ)

99.746% of site owners know even less - read the FAQ in this forum, it might tell you more.

The best advice I can give you is submit your site, and move on to the other things you can do. There is nothing else you can do about DMOZ, obsessing about getting your site listed leads to stomach ulcers, and a requirement to attend an anger management course.

And if you believe the article - don't even waste your time submitting your site to a dead directory.

Nothing new. The same old story again. You better focus on people who know what they are talking about. You could start by reading the FAQ at Resource Zone.

Between the two black-and-white poles ("pining for the fjords" and "in federal court for monopolizing the industry") there's a great deal of wriggle-room for someone who wants to do something good. The ODP is still comfortably in that gray zone.

I'll start worrying about the ODP being dead ... three months after I read the latest-published article speculating about the death of the ODP. So long as it's still important enough to speculate about, it's not dead. (Nobody wonders whether Al Gore is dead!)

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.

That gave me a good laugh and anyone who wants an original website rather than have to wade through several thousand affiliate and syndicated sites to get to the first one will know what a load of nonsense that is. Google search results are determined to a large extent not on relevance but how sneaky and manipulative the webmaster and his/her agents are in fooling the algorithms.

When they can give results consisting only of original, non-affiliate, non-syndicated sites full of verified useful relevance then DMOZ will die, no question. But I can't see that happening in the foreseeable future. Till then we plough on doing what computers can't - knowing intuitively who the spammer is. You would be amazed how editors spot mirrors and affiliates, it is almost instinctive and you can't teach it because you can't explain it - you can only develop the instinct through practice. Another reason the less scrupulous spammers hate us - how do you develop a strategy to beat unexplainable instincts? Many have tried, all have failed.

The big difference is our idea of relevance and what webmasters would like our idea to be. DMOZ is the only place on the web where Ma and Pa sites get absolutely level playing fields regardless of SEO techniques employed and money spent. All they need is copious amount of high quality original material and they will get listed.

When will they get listed? That is the big question. We are enlarging DMOZ by a quarter of a million sites a year at the current rate. That figure is after removal of dead links which we have automated tools to assist us with. So more than that in terms of new sites added. The web may be growing faster but a great deal of that growth is in crap - affiliate travel agents, syndicated sites, etc. There is not a huge growth in what we are interested in - sites with copious amounts of high quality original material. The better the site, the more original the subject matter (e.g. not a travel guide or online casino or other spam-ridden sector), the more interest editors show for the subject (and they are a broad cross-section of typical web surfers), the quicker the review. Send us a site when 50,000 others have done the same on a similar subject and you may as well forget it. And we aren't bothered - if we have 100 original sites on that subject already listed, why do we or anyone else need 49,900 other variations on the same theme? We don't exist to provide consumer choice - same information, pick your source, we exist to provide a link to the information once - if you want consumer choice having got the information then use a search engine.

Tens of thousands of sites are submitted and listed with days or weeks every year. Others wait longer. There is probably (no proof but logic suggests) a correlation between the number of sites that exist on a topic and the average time for a site to be reviewed and the chances of that site contributing significant enough new knowledge on the subject to be worthy of a listing. Online travel agents and US real estate agencies - hundreds of thousands of sites, lots of spam, very few niches left uncovered = lower editor interest, lower priority, increasingly difficult to stand out as original, longer wait for review, much smaller chance of listing.

However, if you have time, here's a selection of somewhat relevent posts to read, some of them several years old and many predicting the end is near.

search Google for dmoz dead site:webmasterworld.com

My favorite is the one about DMOZ being Boo Radley

Is DMOZ dead?

Click to expand...

It was still working a couple of minutes ago.

Gosh, Phil C must be hating the fact the his website has three listings in DMOZ. His assertion that it is dead must be why he took the time to submit it. No doubt, the fact that Google Directory is an ODP feed, further must be proof of this ailing entity and its dooming demise.

IMO, the article only serves the purpose of self-serving promotion and buzz generation. If you want to start a thread that will generate lots of views, posts and comments, what better subject than DMOZ ...

No doubt, he will be asking ODP to remove his links so as not to be associated with a dying directory. Yeah, right!

It's funny to hear talk about the number of websites submitted and looking at it as a "backlog"--for me that might mean looking at a mass of submitted affiliate sites as a priority. I mostly edit in Shopping, in some categories I can look at 100 sites and of those find 2 or 3 that aren't mirrors or an affiliate scheme of some kind (not all categories are like this, but many can be). Some categories are just full of garbage that people have to wade throught to get to something decent to even list. The funny part is that group of garbage that is pending review in that area that sucks up my time in between looking for good sites is the same garbage I probably the same results that I would have to wade through to find those few decent sites in some of the search engines out there. That's why I personally go to ODP first when I want to find something, I don't get all the mirrors, affiiliate sites and so on in my results.

As time goes on, there are more affiliate schemes out there and more people trying to hop on board and make a quick buck...and as that wind blows more and more of them get submitted causing editors to have to sift through more and more of them to find the buried decent sites from within. It takes time. The result though, is a category nicely missing all of the spammy sites that I wouldn't personally have to look at. This is why we consider our services to benefit the end user and not the webmaster. Sometimes, for me, the junky submits are frustrating to see but I get over it quickly when I use the results for my own needs. Personally, I think it works and I wouldn't have it any other way.

People who just want their own sites listed at all costs are going to have different opinions, but no matter what the situation is someone will always be complaining.

I'd reckon that any site that has less than 500 of its pages changed each day by humans (not any form of automation) should be counted as dead.

Can anyone think of any live sites given that definition (other than DMOZ, of course)?

(If that's not your definition of dead, please provide one, thanks).

Oh, there may be a dozen or so sites that fit that match THAT definition of "live". Project Gutenberg proofs about 10,000 pages a day, which translates into at least half that many page changes (many of them fairly insignificant.) Wikipedia surely does a thousand or so page changes a day.

I'd guess the big news syndicators do at least 500 pages: as would major newspapers with their classified ads; likewise eBay and Amazon with their combination of changing catalogs and customer feedback.

But IIRC, the Yahoo directory falls slightly short of that (which may be why you picked THAT number

But none of that was likely of interest to the original poster. The real question people ask is, "is the ODP SUBVERTED yet?" Has anyone found a way to turn it into a free-for-all links farm that'll allow MY spam in?"

Many of the standard tell-tale signs are there: the poster obviously reads and believes what he sees in the SERP perp online world, rather than looking at evidence first-hand; doesn't seem to have a clue that the ODP might be used for FINDING sites rather than promoting them (and therefore overlooks all of its potential in that direction); mentions sites (plural) submitted, despite the clear prohibition in the ODP submittal policies of submitting "related sites"; seems to think just submitting a site guarantees it a listing, despite the clear denial in the ODP submittal policies.

I think the appropriate answer is "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And, dearie, it'll save a lot of time this year if you just hang your stocking over the coal scuttle and cut a hole in the toe."

My site is alive... it's a small very content specialised site, which changes as I update. HAs not been added to the right section yet, because that section seems to be dead.
DMOZ is failing, because it needs more people.

In other words, DMOZ is dead because your site is not listed.

Well, let's take a larger sampling than, um, one site.

Take the total of, say, listings and submittals. Currently there are somewhere over 5000000 listings, well under 500000 listable submittals. By that measure most biassed, most viciously biassed in FAVOR of submittals, the ODP is over 90% live. But that's a submitter's measure, and therefore completely irrelevant.

In actuality, there are probably a million or two potentially listable sites that we'll have to go out and find -- fine by us, we've done it before, and we know how to to it again. But by that rough guesstimate, the ODP is about two-thirds or three-fourths live. But that's an editors' measure, and our users probably don't care about it.

The real measure is: can a user go to the category and find just the right kind of relevant content?

And by that measure, who knows? I think the ODP does pretty well -- but then of course if it doesn't have what I'm looking for, I go find it and add it -- THEN it DOES have it. So my experience isn't normative. Neither is yours -- because you haven't mentioned looking for any content you couldn't find on the ODP. So you have no basis for telling whether the ODP is alive or dead, because you haven't tried to see if it's doing what it does when it's alive.

My site is alive... it's a small very content specialised site, which changes as I update. HAs not been added to the right section yet, because that section seems to be dead.

Click to expand...

You would have stood a greater chance of someone taking the time to review your site by now had you taken the time and effort to read and follow the guidelines when submitting your suggestion. Personally I think it is fair and proper to give priority to those who do. It has not been added yet because no-one has yet reached that point on their priorities where your site has entered their radar. But with more than 20,000 new additions monthly I would say we are pretty much alive and kicking.

DMOZ is failing, because it needs more people.

Click to expand...

Try the reverse view.

If a lot of people are interested in a topic, then there will be a lot of activity about it on the internet. Out of the 1000's of people interested in it, most will just surf, many will built websites, a few will create forums and perhaps one or two will come forward to build up resources such as the DMOZ or Wikipedia.

If no one wants to edit a topic category then there is not enough interest in that topic to generate potential editors.

So, from this viewpoint, which is failing - the topic that can't attract editors or the directory as a whole which can?

There are many editors who will edit in areas outside of their interests, so eventually all submissions will be looked at (even those for 'dead' topics!).

Good points, Eric.

You could turn it around further......It looks like certain industries are part of a conspiracy to ensure their categories on DMOZ are seriously out of date.

Those industries permit (and even seem to encouarge) the spam attacks that make the categories for those industries no-go areas for most editors.

Those conspiracies seem to be succeeding. If there are people in those industries who disagree with that approach, then talking to DMOZ isn't going help directly. They need to talk to their industry regulators.

That's an interesting perspective. I'd certainly agree that the internet marketing industry, as a whole, seems to be working toward making sure honest businessmen AREN'T visible on the web: and the ODP, like every other honest entity, feels the effect. If it is harder to find legitimate sites of real businesses, then it is harder for editors also.

But I do not believe it is a conspiracy. (I think nearly all the conspiracy talk in the world is evidence of nothing but overweening ignorance and insanity on the part of the people who spread the theories. Many things, good or bad, happen just because of the slope of the ground. Raindrops do not have to "conspire" to form a flood.)

But you're facing the "tragedy of the commons" mentality. The Viagra business, or the health diet business, or the travel agent business, thinks it profits as a whole by each additional advertisement. So a group of people in the business will never agree to cut back on advertising. No conspiracy -- just each person singlemindedly and greedily pursuing his own short-term selfish interest -- and the natural result is that the spammers descend en masse upon every section of the information superhighway where traffic is still moving, and block it with waybills until traffic is no longer moving.

Everybody gets hurt. More money is spent on gas, on bigger gas-guzzler vehicles that can cut through the muck, on bulldozers and dump trucks to pick up the litter. On the whole, less money is available for expensive dates, or diets, or trips.

But each individual spammer thinks that his contribution to the ruinous mess will profit him in some small way. Small, mind you, so that he needs to make many contributions to support himself in the style of living to which he feels entitled. Small, so that the failure of any particular litter to bring results doesn't encourage him to move into an honest line of work, or a more efficient form of highway robbery.

No conspiracy, just the working out of petty ignorance, greed, and malice in a significant portion of the world's population.

hutcheson said:

No conspiracy, just the working out of petty ignorance, greed, and malice in a significant portion of the world's population.

Click to expand...

I would say that this is a pretty accurate statement. I would also mention that even honest business people spam out of ignorance. Not realizing the affect of their contribution to the mess, unwittingly creating problems for others and themselves. No malice. I would even say that many don’t even know that it’s a bad thing, and actually assume it is widely accepted, the norm.

I would also mention that even honest business people spam out of ignorance. Not realizing the affect of their contribution to the mess unwittingly creating problems for others and themselves

Click to expand...

Actually many honest business people have to follow Internet marketing techniques that they would rather not do, knowingly, as it is the only way to possibly fight the dishonest. Either that or give up and become a chicken farmer. But where there is an oasis of spam-free regulated information, such as DMOZ, the honest ones will generally respect that because they understand it is trying to level the playing field. If I were sitting at Google I would be thinking about giving DMOZ data more value not less though that would probably not do us any good because it would make us an even more inviting target for destruction by the spammers. There are no easy answers except to become more and more draconian in the way we deal with spam and consider the closure of spam-ridden categories to new submissions.