July 24, 2007

Is DMOZ Delisting Sites Up For Sale?

There is a discussion going on at DigitalPoint that suggests DMOZ is delisting sites they find to be for sale. Interesting if true.

The impact on the sales price could be effected as soon as it is listed. Guess you want to sell it fast and edit the posts.

Mike McDonald over at WebMasterWorld found this link as well.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 4:50 PM | Permalink

January 14, 2007

DMOZ Taking Site Suggestions

DMOZ, the Open Directory Project, has reinstated the Site Suggestion, Update Listing, Editor Reinstatement, and Forgotten Password forms. The directory has been experiencing technical problems since October, and its future has been a topic of discussion on the SEW forums and elsewhere.

A DMOZ Resource Zone administrator reported on Saturday that several features remain unavailable, with no current ETA:

"New editor applications are still disabled and we are still not able to check on the statuses of previous applications. As well, the public abuse reporting system, editor feedback, and any other feature for which the 'Service Temporarily Unavailable' message is still appearing are still not available."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 7:43 PM | Permalink

May 31, 2005

Corrupt Editors? PageRank-less Categories? And Other ODP Problems

Last week, I talked about it perhaps being time for the Open Directory project to close or at least radically change. Some follow-on news related to that. Trouble at the ODP from Jim Hedger at Search Engine Guide is a nice overview of issues troubling the service, which many would nod their heads in agreement to. Jim covers submission backlogs and issues with editors.

As part of his coverage, he mentions the Corrupt DMOZ Editor blog, from someone calling themselves Ana Thema and who is apparently an Open Directory editor. The qualifications are because there's nothing on the site that lets you know if that's the person's real name.

Nevertheless, there is enough to make you feel they've got some type of connection. DMOZ Editors Are Laughing at Your Submissions Behind Closed Doors has screenshots of ODP editors discussing submissions and poking fun at some of them. It should be noted that the examples are from 2001 and 2003, so it's not necessarily the current state at the ODP.

Pros & Cons of a Dmoz Listing from Search Engine Roundtable takes a look at the common wisdom that you want to be in the Open Directory. Are there cases where you might NOT want to be? Perhaps if you don't want Google and Yahoo rewriting your description at times, is one reason. Some categories don't appear to be passing on Google PageRank value, as well. And a few other reasons, in the post.

Want to discuss? We've had some of these issues raised in the Editorial: The Lords of Ye 'Olde ODP thread on the Search Engine Watch Forums. Please comment there or feel free to start a new thread in our Open Directory Project area.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:27 AM | Permalink

May 23, 2005

ODP Forum Closes Status Check Service; Time For The ODP To Close?

Been wondering what's going on with your Open Directory submission? The Resource Zone site has long offered a way to ask ODP editors to do a site status check, a great safety valve for frustrated site owners. But now there's bad news. Via Search Engine Roundtable, news that this service has now been closed: Discontinuation of site status checks. In short, providing this service was deemed taking too much time away from the forum's main mission of discussing the ODP.

Here's a thought. Maybe it's time to dump the ODP editing idea all together, in terms of what's allowed in. Wikipedia seems to get by with letting anyone contribute to its pages. How about letting anyone add any link to any ODP category, while the editors serve as Wikipedia editors seem to do, as high-end police force to keep spam out.

I know, I know -- a flood of spam would probably make that fail. OK, maybe the ODP could be restructured where anyone could tag pages based on the ODP categories, with the editors service as ontology police. That's been one weakness of tagging. A community-upward approach leads to no consistency in tags.

OK, OK -- more spam will still probably come of that. So here's a third idea. Maybe it's just time for the ODP to close, as one of its own founders suggested earlier this year.

Back in 1998, people were frustrated by the inability to get listed in Yahoo. And if you weren't in Yahoo back then, you are largely invisible to web searchers. NewHoo -- later renamed The Open Directory -- was born to provide a solution to the invisibility problem.

It was a good idea then. Today, crawlers rather than directories dominate the web. Google dropped its version of the Open Directory from its home page long ago, and Yahoo continues to bury its own directory (Yahoo Directory Makes Changes & Further Directory Decline for more).

The entire site status service at Resource Zone was established because of -- ironically given why the ODP was born -- the inability for some people to get listed with the ODP. If anything, that problem has gotten worse, given that Resource Zone feels its being overwhelmed by submission requests. Either some radical change is needed, or perhaps the ODP's mission needs to change.

Want to comment or discuss? We have a current thread related to this topic, Editorial: The Lords of Ye 'Olde ODP.

And looking for some Open Directory alternatives? Here's a past article from Gary with some.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:36 AM | Permalink

March 8, 2005

Yahoo Directory Makes Changes & Further Directory Decline The Changes in the Yahoo Directory thread in our Search Engine Watch Forums notes that the Yahoo Directory home page has gained a new look and feel. In addition, sites are now sorted by popularity, as I'll explain more below.

I found it striking that instead of listing all sites in a particular category on one single page, categories with many listings (such as here) now have been broken up into multiple pages, with the option to "Next" to the other pages at the bottom. It's similar to how web search results pages operate. It's not a behavior I recall seeing before.

In my mind, it makes getting a Yahoo Directory listing even less compelling than in the past. Previously, there was some value in a listing because people might "detour" from a search results page into a category page and possibly see your listing. But now, for a popular category, there's a good chance you won't show up at all.

Of course, many people still feel paying Yahoo for a link is worthwhile because of link popularity benefits. So if you're in that camp, the changes probably won't be an issue.

Also interesting is that by default, now ALL sites are now listed in order of popularity. How's that determined? Yahoo has long listed some "Most Popular" sites in its directory but never disclosed how this was determined (such as a lack of revelations in this help page about it). I've always felt that clickthrough measurement, along with perhaps some link analysis, was part of the secret sauce.

The Google Directory has long sorted sites it gathers from the Open Directory by PageRank order. Perhaps part of the change is that sites in the Yahoo Directory are now sorted by Yahoo's own Web Rank order. I'm checking on this, along with the changes in general.

You still have to pay a $299 annual fee to submit to commercial categories at Yahoo.com (if you try to submit and only see an option to do so if you pay, that's a commercial category!).

However, folks in this WebmasterWorld thread, Yahoo Directory Changes Listing Method, discuss the directory changes they spotted back at the end of February as well as paid submission no longer being an option for Yahoo UK & Ireland, nor Yahoo Germany and apparently other European Yahoo sites. UK & Ireland now free submit in our SEW Forums also looks at this.

Overall, both Yahoo and Google have greatly decreased the visibility of their directories over the years. The latest Yahoo changes have the feel of a further backing away and perhaps a precursor to automated compilation in the future. For some related reading, see:

  • Google Loses Tabs In New Look: Explains how the Google Directory was demoted off the Google home page last March.  
  • Yahoo Category Links Gone Away?: An illustrated guide from me last July, on how the Yahoo Directory has been downplayed over time, plus comments from others on the change.  
  • On Web Directories: Covers ResearchBuzz's Tara Calishain decrying the loss of directories last November and Gary Price adding that even if Google and Yahoo are backing off, other directories are still out there.  
  • ODP Founder Comments & Moving Past Directories: The founder of the Open Directory Project said in January that he thinks directories no longer make sense. I largely agree in this blog post about his comments, explaining why I think we moved to the current crawler-based results domination. But humans still do have a role to play, as I also explain.  
  • AOL Search: Playing In the Big Leagues Now: Covers a redesign to AOL Search that happened in January. Part of that redesign was to drop directory category links from search results pages that were in place for ages. The directory used by AOL? The Open Directory, which AOL owns. Dropping the links was yet another sign of the decline for directories. Still want the ODP at AOL? It is there, via a link on the home page. That's all that I can find.  
  • Is DMOZ really that great? from our forums has some recent, poignant comments from Open Directory editors saying not to blame them if the ODP has problems. They do the best they can with the few resources AOL gives them. It's long overdue that AOL either provide more support to the project or give it up to someone who will.

Finally, want to keep up with what's been added to the Yahoo Directory? New RSS feeds for various categories are available. Noticing changes at Yahoo yourself? Please contribute or comment in our thread.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

January 24, 2005

ODP Founder Comments & Moving Past Directories

From SearchEngineBlog.com, Rich Skrenta Interview has Rich Skrenta sharing thoughts on how he went from being a founder of the Open Directory to starting up news search site Topix.

He considers the Open Directory (or any web directory) no longer necessary, given how the web has evolved and grown, saying:

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.

Skrenta also provides some background on how to automatically classify the news and finding copies of stories where registration is not required, when possible.

Some time ago, I wanted to do my own long piece on the decline of directories but never got to it. So I'll dive in a bit here.

Back in 1999, it seemed directories had won in search, making up the majority of services when compared to crawler-based search engines. News.com has a nice piece on this from back then, Web search results still have human touch.

So what happened? I use a library metaphor to explain the decline. In the early days of crawlers, it was like walking into a library, asking for information about cars and being given thousands of matching pages from within the various books to sort through.

Sure, some of the good pages might be on top. But it was overwhelming to get so much junk and other information as well. In contrast, a directory was like using a card catalog. It helped you locate a few books on the topic of cars, a much more manageable list to deal with.

Crawler-technology has improved since 1999, of course. Google led the way and gave us the ability to search on every page of every book in the library AND largely get some very good matches right up front. The need for directories as a filtering device has diminished.

Again from News.com, The changing face of search engines from 2003 looks at some of this flip-flop, including the idea of Yahoo losing its directory "religion" when it put crawler-results first and the challenges the ODP has faced.

Even if directories are in decline, humans still have a role. In our recent coverage of AOL's search engine changes, it was heartening to hear that the company has about 60 people working to active shape, refine and customize some of the results its service. That's 60 more people than Google has actively intervening in keyword-specific results.

There are times when it is helpful for human beings to review results and do hand manipulation of them, to "program" the most important queries to help ensure quality. As I've written before, sadly most of the major search engines have abandoned such review.

You can't intervene in every result, and doing so raises other issues, such as when AOL removed the George W. Bush home page from coming up tops for a search on miserable failure. But it can also ensure that your users are not being served solely by an automated process that can and will make mistakes.

Sure -- airplanes can take off, fly and land themselves. But it's nice to have a pilot there as a double-check and vice versa.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBack