DMOZ gone!! The king is dead. Long live the king.
-
So it appears AOL have pulled the plug on DMOZ. The reason why? - I suspect a financial decision somewhere along the road but personally I think it still had something to offer. I realise there are mirrored versions of it online still (for how long - and for what reason - not much link juice in that) but to pull the plug on one of the oldest and most trusted directories is, well, rather final.
Amongst the rubble that litters the web - the endless paid entry directories and the self proclaimed ultimate listing portals I at least felt there was someone else out there (human) validating my submissions - even if it took some time to find my newest sites online. We all know that links need to be adequately sourced but it was a resource I always began with on the quest in achieving ranking greatness.
Which begs the question - was it still as popular in the last couple of years or have I been chasing my own tail?
Will it be replaced? Or have even human edited directories had their day?I'd be interested to hear what others think.
RIP DMOZ
-
Hi Brett,
With content being more important now I appreciate DMOZ was a dying breed. I also became frustrated with the lack of response from some of the editors - not much point in a human edited directory if it takes months to edit parts of it. I should have thought about it but I just expected it to last a bit longer.
I can see what you mean regarding Machine learning. I bought echo a few months back (mainly because Google Home isn't available in UK yet) but even with their AI you can see how search is becoming more intuitive. It's an obvious advancement and one that has far greater benefit in todays society.
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
-
Hi Steven,
DMOZ and other sites like it are either gone or are nearly ghosts. This is relatable to the conversation on machine learning, where one group believes you can program AI to learn and another (smaller) group believes you have to program all human knowledge into an AI manually to create a true artificial intelligence. Machine learning works, it's efficient, and widely adopted by the rest of humanity. The other approach - one that requires a lot of endless heavy labor - has died off for obvious efficiency reasons (and it doesn't work).
DMOZ was owned by AOL, which was recently purchased by Verizon. I've no doubt Verizon pulled the plug because it was resources spent on a dinosaur that has no value. It was a precursor to modern search engines, but I don't think anyone was using it for its intended original design.
Truth of the matter is, companies that don't invest in machine learning when a competitor in their industry is are going to the grave. You just can't compete with that level of efficiency with human hands.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What weight can 1 huge inbound backlink carry and how long does it take for Google to recognize
My DA is only 22. I got a beautifully crafted dofollow backlink from a site with a DA of 94 and an AHrefs rank of 98 (the 98th most valuable domain in the world) 2 parter- 1. How much do you think one link like that will affect my DA and rankings? (i understand this is subjective - looking more for opinions) 2. How long before MOZ and Google Search Console see the link? It has been 10 days and the link is not showing up on either yet. I know the best thing to do is put my head down and keep building links rather than focusing on "when" and "how much" but I'm getting antsy and curious for the community's opinion. Thanks, Ryan
Link Building | | RyanMeighan1 -
Dead/Broken links on old blogs
Hi We are currently trying to update our blog page on our website but quickly realized there are numerous dead or broken 404 links after clicking on anchor text from past blog posts. Our blog is set up in WordPress and we recently installed an SEO plug in with it. Some of these anchor texts don't actually need links and I want to unlink them, is there a simple way to do this on WordPress? Other anchor text I would like to "301 redirect" to another page. Can i do this on WordPress or is this something my SEO plugin should be able to fix? Answers are much appreciated! Thanks
Link Building | | SapphireCo0 -
Create content for long tail keywords.
I have identified some potential long tail keywords. But I am not a good writer. My strengths are in programming so I am coding the web site. In the mean time, what is the best way to create related content in terms of blog entries. I intend to have landing page in my blog and rank it as high as possible. How did you outsource the good content creation. How much did you pay? Thanks..
Link Building | | zsyed0 -
Dmoz & Google
If I submit an inner page/category of Dmoz to Google will it get crawled quicker? Same question for other directories paid and free.
Link Building | | ianpaine0 -
How long does it take for spam link building to take effect?
I saw a recent surge of a low quality website to the top of SERPS, and looking at the link profile is almost 5,000 newly acquired linking RD's, with a total of over 49,000 links. I looked at a bunch of the links and they are super spammy (foreign language, way unrelated and out of context, spam sites with garbage content, pages of paid links to the websites subpages, etc). My question is, how long does it take for Google to recognize this and penalize this shady site?
Link Building | | Joes_Ideas0 -
Has anyone every researched how long before a link took effect.....
What I mean is lets assume you were to get a link from BBC or CNN how long does it take for that link to have a positive impact on your rankings? I ask because I am experiment with getting links from different sources and I want to try and nail down their real worth..... Also if you do get a link is it normal that google would crawl your site and if so do you see this reflected in googles cache immediately? Thanks
Link Building | | RankStealer0 -
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
Link Building | | tom14cat140 -
How long does it take for link juice to pass
If I were to receive a follow link from a blogger with DA 40 PA 40 today, relevant anchor text linking to correct page, etc., how long do you consider it takes until maximum SEO effect is achieved? Thanks
Link Building | | seanmccauley0