The ODP (Open Directory Project), as DMOZ is also known, was once considered to be the king of all directories. Once upon a time it was said to be a directory that was for the people and by the people, and this openness is what gave it its value.
These days, DMOZ has dropped significantly in popularity over the years, and is the subject of much criticism by webmasters looking for inclusion. But does the open directory still hold value in terms of SEO?
Many users find an issue with the “for the people” part, and the numbers reflect it. Looking at Compete data, Dmoz traffic has reduced in terms of unique visitors, visits, and page views over the last few years . According to Compete, Dmoz hasn’t had 3 million unique visitors in a month since March 2003. In April of 2009, the numbers showed over a million unique visitors.And over the past year unique visitors have seen significant drops with only 1,123,091 unique hits in July 2009, over 300,000 less unique visitors since July of 2008.
Things aren’t looking great for the ODP fo rthe near future. Their customer service didn’t help. They never emailed you when you made a submission and never let you know when your listing went live or was rejected. For a project that claimed to “care about the community and the experience we provide” their service isn’t massively client oriented. But then, it’s run by volunteers that have a lot of other things to do and received thousands of submissions each month – each. But maybe DMOZ 2.0 will be better?
Google and Dmoz
There have been a lot of questions in the past as to just how Google valued Dmoz links (and whether or not they were de-valuing them). Jean Manco, a UK building historian, and a Dmoz editor since 1999 has a very interesting look at the relationship between Google and Dmoz. She says:
In its endless battle against spam, Google needs every weapon it can lay hands on. Recently Google patented a method of including an element of editorial opinion in its algorithm. Dmoz was specifically mentioned. Yet no one knows better than Google that Dmoz only lists a fraction of the Web. So Google is not about to rely on Dmoz alone for any crucial element of its algorithm. That is a safe bet.
The point is, marketers don’t appear to be looking for Dmoz links at the rate they once were. Many will tell you it’s quite hard to get one anyway. This could be another contributing factor to the decline in interest for Dmoz. Dmoz has been working on a Dmoz 2.0 for sometime, but staff seem unable to respond to requests for comments about this.
Have you managed to get a site listed in the ODP recently? Have you had your site removed? Did you see any benefit to your rankings recently after being listed? Let us know your thoughts.
