Zeal directory shutting down on March 28th

When I was at pubcon someone asked Matt Cutts about directorys and which ones he would submit to... he said dmoz botw zeal and yahoo. Now one of them is going.

I see zeal is shutting down!

"Thank you for being a part of the Zeal community and contributing your time and knowledge to the Directory. After trying to put the deserved resources behind Zeal, we have made the conscious decision to shut down Zeal.com. On March 28, 2006 Zeal will no longer be available. We are not selling Zeal.com and have no future plans for it at this time."​

They go on to promote Furl and other Looksmart products. I wonder how long it will be before someone buys out there directory.

 

Too bad. I became a Zealot at the beginning of February. However, I am not entirely surprised. Community maintained directories are difficult to make work because apart from a dedicated core, few have the same passion about created yet another best human edited [enter code word] on the net.

 

bah great timing, I passed that dodgy zeal test around 3 days ago, never mind will have to spend some money and get myself into botw

 

It looks like LookSmart bought it. :-\

 

Wow, that is too bad.
Do you suppose the rise of many smaller directories may have contributed to this?

 

Actually I think the rise in directorys + the success of Furl... why do they want to mess with it ?

 

I saw the post by an editor but after a search on the public and editor side I can’t find anything official from Looksmart/Zeal to back it up.

 

that sucks...
zeal was IS my favorite directory...
and suprisingly alot of webmasters dont know of it!
and what is furl?

 

I was never a fan of Zeal anyways.

 

Seems to make sense since the demise of GRUB last year - it seems LookSmart is going to focus on FURL, but where does LookSmart get their SERPs from now?

 

I believe LookSmart gets results from their own FindArticles and Furl saves. I also see Topix adding content for them on the vertical sites. Surely some results also come from Wisenut which crawls once in awhile according to my traffic files.

 

Very bad news me and as well as for the internet users. I think they should do some thing to LIVE the zeal.com again.

 

This is nice rumour!

 

I heard a rumor that BOTW and Site-Sift were in a bidding war to take over the directory side of it. Perhaps our own smndstr can comment ?

 

Sounds completely bogus to me...

 

I am not sure why this is not a possibility, in fact I was thinking when I first heard the news - heck, I should gather up a couple hundred small directory owners and buy Zeal.... Hmmmmm... That would be fun.

 

zeal is not for sale. however, i wouldn't mind scooping up their assets were they available at a reasonable valuation.

but there is no bidding war underway.

if you are a zeal editor, or know a zeal editor who is looking for a new directory to call home, please let us know. we are always looking for quality editors to help with the growth of the directory. see an old post about editing at botw at the botw blog - http://www.botwblog.org/?p=34

 

Dang - that sucks. They are just going to take down the site and store it next to the ark of the covenant in that huge warehouse?

 

Sorry to hear that. Zeal is one of my favorite sites.

 

Even if it were true Site Sift Media, Inc. does not comment on any ongoing acquisitions.