On a point of technicallity that figure is for "links", not sites. Mentioning it only because the question of how many of those are deeplinks of the same site gets under the skin of one or two frequent flyers in here. Getting a figure for the actual number of sites (ie - unique root URLs) would require getting a copy of the RDF dump and checking, and that isnt very practical, nor especially cogent. Biggest vs Fastest Growing Nonetheless 4.5 mil links is an impressive feat. Still it's also below where they were this time last year. Been following the progress for a long time, and the Wayback machine helps track it. They had 5.1 million + in 2005 They had 4.8 million +about this time in 2007 They had 4.6 million + about this time last year They have 4.5 million + now. Not a trend they're likely to want to see continue. The net has grown exponentially in the same timeframe. Part of the decrease... ...Is attributable to staff finally giving in to the editors requests to kill an ill-conceived news category that was a collector of orphaned links... but that was small potatoes compared to the struggle between Robozilla vs the volunteers. There's always link rot to deal with... and per the numbers their eds are waging a losing battle to stay ahead of their link-checker bot Robozilla (no relation btw... he's one of the *other* Robs). Next year - The Geocities effect? If I was going to make a bet, I'd say their numbers this time next year will be about the same at best. Geocities is closing down in 2009, and based on Dmoz age they're gonna have a stack of those Geocities freebies in inventory. No doubt theyre working on a contingency plan for that hit... but it'll cost a lotta links regardless, as many of those sites were hobby sites created long ago and will not be recreated on a new host. Even if they recruit some good eds that drop will be an offsetting factor on their numbers. Far as sheer size, Dmoz is still "the big one" a lotta directories are gunning for... but they've lost the title for "fastest growing".
grate number huge sites inclusion in this big Directory and it's deserved it's. hope Dmoz can include my sites as well in their Directory.
@robjones About time you came back, isn't it Rob? I think I've got the record (7) for leaving and rejoining.
Yeah... there's probably a huge groundswell of staff and metas praying I'll wander back in. On the bright side I did keep their life from being boring.
Well some of us are just born to shoot our mouths off, Rob, we can't help it. Might as well just accept it and come on back, .