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DMOZ

dmoz, The Open Directory Project: The Republic of the World Wide Web

Even as search engine technology makes great strides in providing useful and relevant search results to the public via complex mathematical formulas, the "human touch" is still very important to people, as is evident by the continuing success of the Open Directory Project, owned by Netscape Inc. ( An AOL owned company ).

Founded on the tradition of the "open source" revolution ( whereby the flow of information is always open to the public and any source information is provided free of charge ), DMOZ maintains its original declaration to become the definitive catalog of the web based on the idea of a republic:

"Instead of fighting the explosive growth of the Internet, the Open Directory provides the means for the Internet to organize itself. As the Internet grows, so do the number of net-citizens. These citizens can each organize a small portion of the web and present it back to the rest of the population, culling out the bad and useless and keeping only the best content...

"The Open Directory follows in the footsteps of some of the most important editor/contributor projects of the 20th century. Just as the Oxford English Dictionary became the definitive word on words through the efforts of a volunteers, the Open Directory follows in its footsteps to become the definitive catalog of the Web."

- quote from the dmoz.org website

The idea of volunteering and maintaining specific categories for a web directory was, and to this day still is, extremely attractive to a wide audience, and the Open Directory Project quickly became the largest human edited directory of websites in the world. Attaining a prominent listing in the ODP also became very attractive to budding webmasters, and remains a very important consideration in search engine optimization to this day, primarily due to the strong dmoz-google partnership. The free DMOZ data feed is used by thousands of websites across the globe, and serves as the sole data source for google.com directory listings.

Getting listed in DMOZ is dependent upon:

• The quality of the website design
• The quality of the content
• The accuracy of the submission
• The ODP terms of service
• The opinion of the editor who reviews the website for inclusion to the submitted category

Back to: Search Engine Optimization

...did you know?

...that there is an SEM method even more powerful than social bookmarking and online social networking? Recognition on wikis. Websites such as Wikipedia are rapidly becoming primary sources for information for the general, searching public. Why is this method more powerful than social bookmarking and social networking sites? Simple: Individuals involved in social networking have a very short attention span. Individuals seeking information are in a very different mental space; one that could place your project and ideas at the forefront of their decision making process.