Zulu Digital | DMOZ Submission & The Future of Google Search

It's a crying shame that as we continue to motor (at a rapid pace) into these new and exciting times, the elderly, seemingly depreciating web resources, move further into the shadows of redundancy.

The organic performance of web content is being monitored closely by the entire SEO industry, as each of the major Search Engines make significant strides into creating more natural ranking solutions, aimed at improving the relevancy of the SERPs, which they return.

Whilst for the foreseeable future at least, there will be a reliance upon a general algorithm (which considers the quality of inbound links, keyword density etc), Search Engines are beginning to place a higher importance on the more 'organic' aspects of a website - aspects which are more difficult to change on the fly and aspects which SEOs have less control over, as opposed to easily changed on-page tags, for example. To illustrate, Google now considers your server location within its algorithm, in order to return geo-specific results.

How then, based on what has previously been said, will the Open Directory Project fit into the world of Search?

For quite some time, DMOZ has been recognised as the most important and highly regarded directory on the web - so much so that Google was said to consider a site's listing in the directory as being an important factor to its own ranking algorithm. There's no evidence to suggest anything to the contrary today, although, figures have recently been released which show a significant fall in the number of visitors browsing DMOZ. Of course, with such statistics, comes the inevitable questioning of whether or not DMOZ has reached the end of the road.

I must admit, I can't recall too many occasions when I have browsed DMOZ for the sake of browsing. Pretty much all of my search requirements are met satisfactorily by Google, MSN and/or Yahoo (not necessarily in that order, but still...). I don't feel as if DMOZ is an all-to-frequently used search facility, and so, the reduction in the number of visitors cannot relate to fewer searches being conducted, but rather, correspond to fewer directory submissions.

There is somewhat of a significant proportion of the online community which has become disillusioned with DMOZ, and seem to have resorted to removing the submission of their sites to the directory, from their SEO strategies. The length of time which is taken to approve or disapprove individual submissions, on top of the fact that editors very rarely provide feedback (or even an acknowledgement) to those sites which have failed to be approved, - it's pretty easy too see why SEOs are boycotting the once popular directory.

Despite this, I'd suggest that the SEO community's relationship with DMOZ will do nothing to affect the relationship the directory has with Google. The mere nature of DMOZ, - the fact that it is an extremely comprehensive, human-edited directory, (1) does nothing but support the importance which Google places on it, and (2), aligns nicely with the future plans for the world of Search.

No-one said SEO was easy. Rankings are difficult to achieve, and in some cases, especially where highly-important directories are concerned, submissions should be challenging too. If all sites were accepted into DMOZ, its importance would diminish quite rapidly. If webmasters wish for their sites to reach the top spots within the SERPs, they should be made to bite the bullet and take notice of DMOZ, and not give-in to their egos and ignore the resource. Google seems keen to look for features to add to their algorithm, which make it more difficult for SEOs to manipulate rankings, and DMOZ does exactly that. Its value should not, and in my opinion, will not diminish anytime soon.

Author - Tom

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