Traffic Flow SEO

The DMOZ aka "The Open Directory" started out with the best intentions, but as of late has become that train wreck that you don't want to watch, but you can't take your eyes off of it. In it's original form it was a human-edited directory that would list all the best sites on the Web. This was very important as the search technology was not very advanced at the time and this directory was an important resource for Web surfers.

Many early (and some current) search engines utilized information from the DMOZ in their results. This gave the DMOZ some early recognition and respect which made it a desirable directory to have your Website listed. In 2000 Google decided to take a copy of the DMOZ, sort it by PageRank and call it the Google Directory. What is important about this is that in addition to creating the Google Directory, Google also started to give extra preference to Websites listed within the directory (DMOZ/Google Directory) and as Google has grown in popularity and reach getting a listing within the DMOZ has become even that much more important.

Today, it has almost become impossible to get your site listed in the DMOZ as the volunteers that run the directory may only be active within certain categories that they have an interest in. Many sites are submitted and the owners never hear anything back, even after years and years of waiting. How can you figure out which categories are active, which may give you a chance of having your submission seen by a volunteer? Well you can use - DMOZ is alive to check this out.

Even though a listing in the DMOZ is still considered a big plus for SEO efforts it may be coming to end. First of all, Google has becoming slower and slower in updating their Google Directory with updated DMOZ data. This may be a sign that Google is losing interest in the value of the directory. In the past couple of years I have seen many forum posts offering to get your site listed in the DMOZ for different amounts of money supposedly from DMOZ editors/volunteers. Recently, Shoe Money which is a very popular Blog was sent an email requesting money from a "so called" editor asking for $5,000 to not have their site removed. This email was ignored and amazing enough a follow-up email came and the site was removed. This is absolutely amazing and you can read all about it here under a post labeled - DMOZ Extortion.

In addition to everything else, the DMOZ had been sold, appeared to have potentially run out of funds for hosting, saved at the last moment, stopped submissions for a period of time and had general errors and inconsistencies. Is it just a matter of time before this mammoth directory ends it run or will it be updated and reborn? My guess is that the interest is waining and the corruption questions may be it's downfall.

UPDATE - Joost De Valk, a former DMOZ editor tries to figure out what is going on with the Shoe Money Blog corruption and gets locked out of his account. You can read more at - The DMOZ mob strikes again…

You can also see this corruption played out over at ScriptLance.com (custom freelance programming forum) where people are buying links. You may write this off as a fraud, but he reality is these jobs get completed and the people who complete these jobs do not get paid until the job is done. Check it out for yourself here - DMOZ Listings For Sale