Time for DMOZ to close?

According to this interview, it seems Rich Skrenta would agree:
http://www.searchengineblog.com/rich-skrenta-interview.htm


... It achieved these goals and has fulfilled its mission
of becoming the largest human-edited directory of the web. But the
web moved on, and while directories were very interesting in the mid
'90's, keyword search has eclipsed them as the main ways consumers find information on the Internet. - Rich Skrenta

 

That's funny. Sad-funny.

Stop highjacking my DMOZ threads for your KILL THE FROG campaign

 

Perhaps we can compromise, and turn it into a Kill DMOZ campaign?

 

Dmoz is a joke, check out this guys application - http://resource-zone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32533. Poor guy has been waiting since 22nd January for editor application to be reviewed and its still not done.

 

I don't want to turn this into a Google bashing thread, but it has always amazed me given the quality (poor) and the known problems with DMOZ that Google would apparently use it as a significant factor in determining page relevance.

Doesn't anyone understand that bad data is probably worse that no data. With bad data you can come to the wrong conclusion with confidence. At least with no data you are more likely to examine and evaluate each decision before and after you make it.

Talking about Directories in general, has anybody seen any data on how many people actually use directories to search for or locate web pages. I would guess that the number is so infintesimal compared to people using SEs that it approaches zero as a limit.

 

I believe that is why directories such as uncoverthenet have altered their homepage to look like a search engine.

 

The original ideal behind DMOZ was what encouraged Google to use them. Human edited, no spam blah blah blah

 

Well the other problem with DMOZ is that they have always rejected Affiliate sites and refused to list them. In some cases this is doing the buyer and the eventual Google searcher a disfavour.

For instance I have an affiliate site where I control the pricing and the merchandising of the product. In other words I can run specials and give away coupons etc. Therefore I may have the best price for any given product. So by refusing to list my web site they are potentially depriving a buyer from obtaining the best deal.

 

Bob, I totally agree with you and have been waiting for someone to bring up this point.

So, as I see it, here are the possible conclusions coming from that statement:
1. Google is dumb or delusional.
2. Google is short on resources and doesn't have time to deal with something so obviously skewing their rankings
3. Google believes that there is still value in the ODP, and that your premise (poor quality and "known problems" of the ODP) is not one that Google believes is that valid. They believe that the known issues are outweighed by the value of the content of the directory.

Based on the little I have seen, and the changes I have seen Google make over the years, they most certainly aren't dumb, and they appear to have the resources.

So, maybe someone can come up with another explanation, but until that time, I tend towards #3. If Google really thought things with the ODP were as bad as you seem to think, they would have dropped it quickly well before now.

 

True story...
A little over a year ago, we were told my 2 year old grandson had a stroke. I’d never heard of little children having strokes. Stunned, I went straight to the computer and googled every combination of phrases I could think of to find information about pediatric stroke.

All queries resulted in information regarding strokes in adults, but not children. Stroke is very different in adults and children so the sites I found were useless. Although stroke is among the TOP TEN causes of death in children, there was no information about children and stroke!

After about a month of obsessive searching I mentioned my frustration about the lack of info in an internal dmoz forum. That same day, editors who are health care professionals came through for me. A plan was made to find sites and create a category.

I had found mention of childhood stroke in a few pretty obscure places. A nurse/editor living thousands of miles from me worked on that tiny list, helped me identify the relevant phrases to search (I don’t know medical terminology.) With a lot of back and forth communication, lots of searching, and thanks to nurse/editor we now have a category for Pediatric Stroke at http://dmoz.org/Health/Conditions_and_Diseases/Neurological_Disorders/Stroke/Pediatric/

Were my motives in this category purely altruistic? Of course not and I freely admit it, but this is the type of thing editors and web professionals will never agree on. Yes, this took a lot of editor time and the resulting category is small. The value is great because Google has visited links from the sites in that category and now return a lot of relevant results. I know that other distraught parents and grandparents can easily find the answers they need when told their child has had a stroke. Therefore, I know dmoz has value.

Dmoz editors take pride in what we do. There’s very little satisfaction in clearing out a backlog of bad submissions to a spammy category. With all due respect compar, I'd rather ignore the masses of affiliate sites and concentrate on the obscure, hard to find information that really makes a difference.

I know our goals conflict. It doesn't make either of us wrong, just different.

Anne

 

Or, as I said elsewhere,

4. Google is already taking some steps to deemphasize or devalue DMOZ but hasn't yet made a decision as to whether to dump the directory, or create their own, or do something else -- because there are currently higher priorities that are the focus of their attention.

The link to the Google Directory was long ago moved off the front end of the Google site and delegated to an obscure backrrom.

More recently, the link was removed from the latest version of the Google Toolbar -- there is no longer even an option to display the link.

 

We're definitely touching a subject matter where search engine spiders cannot be relied on. I have looked thru some of these categories here http://dmoz.org/Health/Conditions_and_Diseases/Neurological_Disorders/ and there is definitely use in DMOZ.

 

Right, Minstrel, I forgot about that one. Apologies.

But if this is the case, why are Web Professionals on all these fora getting so upset? If the path to Google cutting the ties with the ODP is this inevitable, then why doesn't everyone just stop talking about the ODP and get along with developing and promoting their sites in other places?

In a way, this is a variation on my option 2 - because if that was the case, and they had enough resources, they would be able to do their lower priority work sooner.

I still wonder, though, if things are as bad as they are being made out to be, why Google isn't making it a higher priority. And that leads me to think that they don't believe it's as bad as posts here imply.

Time will tell, I guess.

 

Short answer: Because not every one agrees with my opinion. And even those who do are angry that the situation has endured so long and progressed to this point, since many webmasters feel (and rightly so) that they are being unjustly handicapped in Google ranking by DMOZ editors.