DMOZ Explained

The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (http://www.dmoz.org), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links originally established by Netscape that was built and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.

ODP uses a “hierarchical ontology scheme” for organizing site listings. Listings on similar topics are grouped into similar categories, which then can include smaller categories. The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive directory on the World Wide Web.

The World Wide Web is expanding exponentially, daily, at a staggering rate. The challenge to automated search engines is incredible and they are increasingly unable to deliver useful results to users search queries. The full time staff at commercial directory sites are unable to stay abreast of the flow of submissions, and the quality and comprehensiveness of their directories has paid the price. “Link-rot” (the process of links on the web deteriorating and becoming irrelevant) is setting in and the internet is outpacing the human capacity to organize it.

Rather than acquiescing to the weight brought about by this unprecedented growth of the internet, the Open Directory facilitates a means by which the Internet can organize itself. As the World Wide Web expands, so does the number of netizens (net+citizens). These cyber-citizens (netizens) have the ability to organize small portions of the Web and reintroduce it into the Web, banishing the bad and useless and maintaining the useful.

The Open Directory was founded in the spirit of the Open Source movement, and is the only major directory that is 100% free. There is not, never has been nor will there ever be a fee to submit to the directory and or utilize the data contained within the directory. The Open Directory is free to those who agree to comply with the “free license agreement”.

The Open Directory is the most widely distributed data base of Web content classified by mankind. The Open Directory and its editorial standards body of cyber-citizens provide a hive-mind supporting resource discovery on the Web. The Open Directory fuels the primary directory services for the Web’s most popular search engines and portals to include: Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, Direct Hit and hundreds more…

BayTech explains the DMOZ and the Open Directory Project. Without the DMOZ ODP the internet linkage would deteriorate.