Sep 26th 2007 9:01PM
The Search For DMOZ
Yesterday the internet was all a flutter with reports and wide ranging theories as to why searches for "DMOZ" in Google were not returning the usual results. If you happened to miss those, I've included a couple of examples that can be found here, here, here and here.
While these made for great headlines and no shortage of comments and link backs...they were 100% off the mark.
Truth is, this is just one of those things that happens from time to time in the world of search.
We made some significant upgrades to our back-end systems to improve the stability of DMOZ. One of those changes required changing the root domain from dmoz.org to www.dmoz.org. What we all witnessed yesterday and what was reported by the great sites above was part of an index recognizing, adjusting and updating in real time. This was confirmed in discussions we had with Google and everything should be running smoothly now.
So go ahead and try a query for DMOZ. And if you don't see our site, clear your browser cache and try again.
Here is a screen grab taken 5 minutes ago.
You can also give it a shot in the search box above ( click the web link & enter query ).
DMOZ is not dying folks. We're growing every day. Globally.
Feel free to use that sound bite from now on in your future posts : )
While these made for great headlines and no shortage of comments and link backs...they were 100% off the mark.
Truth is, this is just one of those things that happens from time to time in the world of search.
We made some significant upgrades to our back-end systems to improve the stability of DMOZ. One of those changes required changing the root domain from dmoz.org to www.dmoz.org. What we all witnessed yesterday and what was reported by the great sites above was part of an index recognizing, adjusting and updating in real time. This was confirmed in discussions we had with Google and everything should be running smoothly now.
So go ahead and try a query for DMOZ. And if you don't see our site, clear your browser cache and try again.
Here is a screen grab taken 5 minutes ago.
You can also give it a shot in the search box above ( click the web link & enter query ).
DMOZ is not dying folks. We're growing every day. Globally.
Feel free to use that sound bite from now on in your future posts : )
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1. How long does it take for DMOZ to respond to your request to become an editor? I applied over a month ago and haven't even received an email confirmation.
Posted at 9:39PM on Jan 27th 2008 by Lance McCollough
2. Great to hear you are hiring more editors DMOZ. DMOZ was always great and continue like that. Thanks. Bye, Francisco. I added my site http://www.comprarmonitoreslcd.com.ar , lets see.
Posted at 8:55AM on Mar 8th 2008 by Francisco Seo
3. Dmoz! is alive and kicking...! Its great to know, Dmoz is hiring more and new professionals in order to have a look at things and help users be listed there.
Thank you - Tina
Posted at 4:10PM on Jun 12th 2008 by Tina
4. travesti
Posted at 3:12PM on Jul 25th 2008 by sporcubay
5. Hi dmoz admin!
Our website has submitted in the ODP for 6 months, and we used the ODP%uFFFDs guideline standards to submit our site into the ODP. But now our site was still not updated in ODP System %uFFFDThe page you attempted to access does not exist on this site.%uFFFD%uFFFD . Please check for us, and we really wanna know what happening.
Thanks so much! Ticsoft Jsc!
Posted at 2:28AM on Sep 2nd 2008 by Nguyen Dinh toan
6. this post realy useful thanks for it...
Posted at 3:17AM on Aug 17th 2010 by sam
7. Im glad to see everyone here
Posted at 2:24AM on Apr 21st 2011 by jimm0719
8. My website still in pending though i followed the guidelines while i was submitting my site
Posted at 2:05PM on May 15th 2011 by Faraz Ahmed
9. Thanks to AOL and Google for working together to resolve this so quickly.
Posted at 10:24PM on Sep 26th 2007 by xixtas
10. Does the fact that DMOZ is alive and well mean you guys will catch up with adding websites to your directory?
Don't say, "help us by becoming an editor" because I've applied twice and received no response either time on that issue either.
So I've tried to get on board and help and a few years ago, I did edit for DMOZ. I don't have the same old email address or even know what it was. Not even sure what username I had. That seems to be the reason for not contacting me back? Or is it just backlog like with adding new websites?
Posted at 4:07AM on Sep 27th 2007 by NameCritic
11. By the way, it's not really hard to be placed on that request. You already were before to add a 301 redirect from the http:// to http://www.
Posted at 3:15AM on Sep 27th 2007 by kaztor
12. @NameCritic: This is rather off-topic for this post, but if you've been an editor before you must come back under your old identity -- a new account is not permitted. You may find the good people at http://www.resource-zone.com/ will be able to help you out though.
Posted at 4:24AM on Sep 27th 2007 by chaos127
13. what can you say about ICANN banning the use of www 2 years ago? ;)
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/09/icann_ban_www.html
Posted at 12:21PM on Sep 27th 2007 by splogger
14. Glad to hear its resolved. I would love to see DMOZ get back on track and make some changes.
Posted at 1:04PM on Sep 27th 2007 by Mack
15. @Splogger - It's a bs story. Thank god for the auto link condom.
Posted at 1:12PM on Sep 27th 2007 by MrStitch
16. We enjoy the Great evolution of DMOZ !
That's why I've introduced DMOZ search tool on my Seo Toolbar :
http://referenceur.wordpress.com/seo-toolbar/
Posted at 8:01PM on Sep 27th 2007 by Bilel
17. "Does the fact that DMOZ is alive and well mean you guys will catch up with adding websites to your directory?"
No. Editors are only required to make one edit every 4 months - and that can be any edit, for example rewording the description. They do not have to add any sites.
Posted at 4:08PM on Sep 27th 2007 by daisy
18. This is good stuff gals/guys. Anytime you can reach out to the general public in some way has to be a good thing. I'd be wary though of comments about:
"why is my site not listed."
"are you going to ADD sites again."
"how long before you list my site."
etc, etc. As a long time forums owner.. PRO DMOZ btw, I've seen and read the same complaints for years. It's good you all will have a place like this to post changes and news, etc, but keep in mind the "SEO" industry only cares about itself and what can you do for ME NOW attitude. I'm sure you all already know that. :-)
Kudos to you.
Posted at 4:57PM on Sep 27th 2007 by Doug Heil
19. Glad to hear its resolved. I would love to see DMOZ get back on track and make some changes.
Posted at 11:35PM on Sep 27th 2007 by http://www.idoo-dpf.com
20. I think the issue here is bigger than what initially appears.
An incredible number of pages which URLs have been changed to http://www.dmoz.org/... from http://dmoz.org/... during the process of canonicalisation in August 2007, are currently not in Google's cache and their links are not being considered by Google.
As an example: a google search for '"Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television" site:www.dmoz.com', brings no results, although these words are clearly on this page: http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/Canada/Arts_and_Entertainment/
So at the moment Google does not see these words and the related link from DMOZ, and the same applies to millions of other links in other pages on DMOZ (it is easy to check this on the other pages by picking a random page in DMOZ, picking a particular sequence of words in it and searching for the exact sentence in Google, specifying site:www.dmoz.org).
This is affecting millions of websites and of course an incredible amount of Google search results, until the canonicalised http://www.dmoz.org/... pages with the new URLs are indexed and cached in Google again.
I think that you guys should ask the engineers at Google to have a proper look into this, in order to try to index all the DMOZ pages with new URLs as soon as possible. In fact a huge number of searches and even tests at Google on new algorithms might be altered by this effect.
Posted at 3:52AM on Sep 28th 2007 by Vincent H.