That’s right, I just called DMOZ, the Open Directory Project (ODP), a demon.

There was a time when I had great respect for projects like the ODP and how effectively they actually were, and although I have recently seen articles from some ODP editors / moderators defending what they do on ODP, well, I think that the DMOZ Directory is fast loosing its charm.

Yes, as per the basics of SEO, backlinks are great and very helpful.  Backlinks from sites that have a high PageRank are very valuable, and better yet, in Google’s books, sites that are built with the open source or volunteer framework in mind are even better. However, there is no way that I will believe the argument that, quite frankly, a vast majority of DMOZ editors are, well, infact, rogue.

Despite how seriously some of them take their work to be, I can’t help but think that there are others who simply fob off every request they simply because they can. George Carlin would have called these chaps the likes of George Bush: monkey faced pea brained folk who project their insecurities on other users of the internet.

In all fairness, I haven’t submitted a lot of websites to DMOZ in the past 12 months, but those that I have haven’t gone through. Agreed, maybe I was sloppy with some of my submissions, but I can tell you that some of them weren’t quite as sloppy and were in full compliance with the ODP guidelines. Better yet, I don’t know how the ODP goes by qualifying people who apparently have the right to determine whether or not your website is in violation of copyrights? They’re probably not and take the play it safe approach.

Of course, ODP has other issues: some websites have 30+ listings with some very irrelevant descriptions. As with all volunteer organizations, though, the quality of work and the product diminishes, which is what we are seeing with the ODP. They don’t pay attention to standards compliance or any other criteria, just what they think may or may not comply with their guidelines, most which many of their editors probably don’t understand. I guess that’s the kind of work you get from free volunteers.

But low and behold, this is not all bad news.  Back in the day, ODP was vital to get a listing on; it is not anymore. You can try, but I wouldn’t pull my hair out worrying about why some ODP editor cannot read english and figure out the relevance of a particular website to a certain category.

There are hundreds of other directories on the web: granted they are not as effective as DMOZ (and the ones that are charge money), but then you can get links from other high ranked websites too.

Yes, the internet is not fair, and probably neither is Google’s support of DMOZ. But then you’ve got to live with what’s out there, right?

Oh and this site is not listed on DMOZ. I’m not even sure what category to put it in. Anyone have any ideas?

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under Opinion, Tech & Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.