Re: Open Directory Project Listings

From: David Yancey <dyancey_at_adjunction.com>
Date: Fri 07 May 2004 07:24:36 -0500

ODP Facts:

Submitting your site to the Open Directory Project is important; a listing
in ODP is a plus in Google rankings, and counts as a significant link in
other search engines that rank for link popularity. The DMOZ database
maintained by the ODP contains over 4 million human-reviewed
listings. This is, still, the largest and best quality source of qualified
info about websites.

ODP listings are deployed in *several hundred search sites*, from mighty
Google down to niche engines like our www.vivante.com. Few realize that
Google rose to its current prominence thanks in part to its inclusion of
these ODP listings.

Be aware, however, that the ODP is *not* a search engine. It was
established as a voluntary effort by web enthusiasts and information
retrieval professionals, to try and give Internet users a qualified list of
screened sites, among the (already, by the late 90's) bewildering array of
websites. The volunteer editors are *not* fundamentally concerned with how
well a website does commercially; their sole goal is to find and present
sites in "their" category that *in the sole opinion of the editor, users
will benefit from or wish to see*.

ODP Problems:

First, understand that the ODP is not concerned with making money. There
are no standards of performance or service that one expects to find in a
profit-making organization.

The Open Directory Project was absorbed into Netscape, and is still a
not-for-profit organization, which is owned by a highly commercial one,
AOL/Netscape. With AOL's absorption into Time Warner, and AOL's host of
other troubles, the ODP has long suffered from managerial neglect, as did
its Netscape parent until quite recently. This anomalous, accidental
ownership is the root of ODP's current malaise.

Unfortunately, as a result, the ODP not well-managed, if one can say it is
"managed" at all. There is no perceptible direction, no known plan, no
transparent means of policing the potential abuses; the list goes on.

Getting your site listed is usually very difficult and, as many here have
indicated, frustrating. There is a shortage of unpaid volunteer
editors. Abuses by some editors are rife in several categories. If one is
successful in getting one's site noticed by an editor, there is no
assurance the editor will like it enough to include it in the DMOZ
database. There is no effective, timely, transparent appeals
process. Further, *if* one can get a site listed, getting the listing
changed to reflect ordinary changes such as content, URL changes, or the
like can prove near-impossible.

Complaining to an editor or the ODP itself is usually fruitless; AOL is
responsible. I and a few other search industry leaders have publicly
recommended that AOL spin off the ODP into a truly independent foundation,
so that it has a chance of being funded, and ultimately, being managed
responsibly. AOL does not care to deal with such proposals.

ODP's Future:

The irony is that, for all its problems, the ODP remains the main source of
free, human-reviewed listings. The www.Zeal.com community owned by
Looksmart is the other prominent site of this type. But Zeal listings are
not widely distributed as are those of the ODP. With hundreds of engines
and niche sites incorporating ODP listings, it therefore behooves any site
owner to try and get into the directory.

Will ODP go away, as a poster suggests? Certainly, in time, assuming the
ODP is not revamped, re-constituted, and funded, as we and other search
sites find a better solution to the listing-economics and quality trade-off
problem.

And it is true that Google is now so large and committed to alternative
methods that it is moving away from DMOZ.

But the quality of automated ("spidered", or "crawled") listings is *also*
declining, in Google especially, according to expert
webmasters. Meanwhile, commercial listings are progressively dominating
the search results pages, *even though the latest study suggests that 60%
of searchers do not use these paid listings*.

To date, no one has solved the problem of amassing millions of thoughtful
human reviews of websites *for free*, in a process that benefits user and
site owner alike. The alternative is of course "paid-inclusion" or PFI,
but a great many site owners are too small or simply refuse to pay a
reasonable fee for the real cost of entry, review, maintenance, and,
especially, listing updates.

The fact is that the search users are still not being well-served by search
engines and directories, in far too many instances. For all its drawbacks
and unacceptable operational problems, the ODP is one of the few
*relatively* trustworthy sources of information about websites for
non-specialist consumers and students.

David Yancey
http://www.vivante.com
"Web searching *your* way"






Received on Fri May 07 2004 - 07:24:36 CDT