Search Engines & Technology Frank Ross on 13 Jan 2007 08:50 am
ODP Gone for Good?
Remember when the Open Directory Project (ODP) was the end-all for valuable inbound links? Times have certainly changed. Nowadays, they are mostly a reflection of better days. Times when directories were the search engine of choice. If you try to submit your site you get this message:
Service Temporarily Unavailable - We apologize for the inconvenience while we resolve technical problems. Please check back in a day or two.
Day or two? A forum post from 11/26/06 (link here) - as well as other things I’ve read - suggests that the problem has persisted for longer than just a few days. In fact, I first tried this last week and have tried off and on over the past few days. I would say ODP (aka DMOZ) is simply a relic of times past and may never come back.
Furthermore, there is evidence of corruption in the ranks. Remember Ana Thema? The so-called corrupt DMOZ editor who started a blog call Corrupt DMOZ Editor (link here) - which has not been posted in for nearly 10 months. And then there was the DMOZ editor who got exposed for taking money for putting up listings (link here). Whether those two are the same I have no idea.
But the question remains as to why search engines still give credence to ODP as an important resource. Google for example, still shows a ToolBar page rank of 8 associated with it and the ToolBar page rank was recently updated as I understand. I suspect ODP should be relegated to the internet archive and just be seen as a page from the book of internet history. At the very least, it is not living up to one of its main goals:
The ODP is an Open Source inspired initiative created and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors. The following is a social contract that we created to reflect Netscape’s commitment to the Web community to keep the ODP a free and open resource…
ODP … is anyone home?
Tags: Open Directory Project, ODP, ODP Problems, ODP Corruption, ODP Failure, DMOZ Problems, DMOZ Corruption
on 14 Jan 2007 at 11:19 am 1.robwatts said …
Gone for god? Sigh, if only.
They must have heard you, I ranted on the topic over at my blog, they’ve re-opened for submissions.
on 14 Jan 2007 at 11:20 am 2.robwatts said …
>Gone for god?
Should have read Gone for good?
Ha, otoh