The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as Dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.
ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings. Listings on a similar topic are grouped into categories, which can then include smaller categories.
DMOZ or the Open Directory Project is a great web directory to get your site listed and sources the Google directory and a large number of sites using ODP data. You can also become an ODP editor and be part of the amazing ODP community.
DMOZ is a source of quality content, they actually claim themselves the "Republic of the Web". Being inside of the open directory project means being inside of a quality whole. There is many advantages you can take from DMOZ if your website is listed.
Once your site is indexed at DMOZ, it will (in time) also start appearing on many other search engines. Google’s directory is taken directly from DMOZ. The search engines that use DMOZ data add their own tweaks to it, but there seems to be consensus that being listed at DMOZ boosts your rank at those search engines – especially the ones that take link popularity into account.
This means that a listing in the ODP directory will enable your site to show up for searches done on any engines or sites which use the Open Directory Projects data, provided of course your title and description are optimized for the searched terms. The fact that lots of third party search engines and sites use ODP data is the main attraction of applying for a listing with them. The main attraction is not as one might think to be found at searches done at dmoz.org. Dmoz.org itself receives only a tiny percentage of the traffic that sites such as Google and Lycos receive.
This has some significant effects for websites that are listed in DMOZ. PageRank is an integral part of Google's ranking algorithm, and higher PageRank helps towards higher rankings. The PageRank within a website is increased by pages from other sites linking to it, and the higher the PageRank of the pages that link to it, the better it is for the receiving site.
It will not cost you a dime to get listed on DMOZ but before you submit your website to the Open Directory Project for review, you will need to be certain it is developed with DMOZ standards in mind. You will need to go through all of your web pages to make sure that your website is elegant and professional.
Whatever you do, be careful when submitting to the Open Directory. Write an objective description of your website paying attention to what separates it from the others in the pack - Open Directory editors won't add your site just because you ask them to. The site must add something of value to the directory. Even if your site is better than a site you've found on the directory, it won't necessarily be accepted unless it offers something unique or new and of value to web users.
But things have changed a lot since DMOZ began in the mid 1990s. Since then, Google came along with very relevant search results, and they were kind enough to show the other engines how to produce such relevant results. That caused dramatic improvements, to the extent that top search engines have been able to provide very relevant search results for some time, and they provide a lot more of them than DMOZ is able to provide.
Google representatives intimated that they would be using DMOZ listings in their algorithm to validate a site’s “worth”. It has long been thought that Google gives a tiny ranking boost to sites which are listed in the Open Directory. Whether this is true or not, we cannot know. But Google does appear to favor DMOZ-listed sites.
Because of this, many webmasters blame DMOZ for their financial ruin and poor search engine rankings when DMOZ fails to list their site in a timely fashion. They shouldn’t blame DMOZ; it was Google’s genius idea to use a directory full of unreviewed submissions, some of them from the last decade.
If your site doesn't get added to DMOZ, it may have been rejected. Most of the time, you will not get a message from an editor informing you of the status of your submission. We suggest that you submit, then wait. If your site does not get added in 4-6 weeks, don't send the editors an email complaining that your site was rejected. If the site was rejected, they already know that. Remember you are dealing with a volunteer who takes great pride in helping to build the Internet's most useful directory. If you act like a pain in the ass, expect to be ignored. If you have submitted your site according to the guidelines, and it has not been added after 3 or 4 weeks, send the editor an extremely polite, nice, kind email asking them to consider reviewing your site. DO NOT RESUBMIT - resubmitting puts your site back to the end of the line.
Over the years, DMOZ has been often duplicated but never replicated. Many initiatives have co-opted its model, while others have learned the lessons of DMOZ and built community based projects that ushered in the much ballyhooed social media revolution. Projects such as Wikipedia have traced their origins and influence to DMOZ.
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