If you are internet savvy and involved in the world of SEO then you will have more often than not heard about DMOZ before. DMOZ was created in January of 1999 as an Open Directory, a place where a selection of good quality websites could be stored to be used as reference.

A unique point of DMOZ was that the directory was human edited which means no spamming websites or cheating the “system” for financial gain. DMOZ became so popular that major search engines, including some big names (like AOL) use to – and still do use the websites stored as reference for their search results.


Personally I have been creating websites for around 10 years but made the mistake of not perusing them as they would probably be worth a lot of money these days. Back then things were a lot simpler, with html coding being the primary source of website design. Anyway, back on subject – getting listed on DMOZ use to be a pleasant experience which took no more than 2 minutes of your time and you could expect to see your website listed within a few months (yes even back then it still took a while).

Back then as soon as I was listed in DMOZ I saw a massive increase in traffic results, not just random traffic but targeted, and I had a sales increase of at least $3000 per month, from my then bedroom. I had a huge increase from Google and many smaller search engines that used DMOZ.

So where did it all go wrong? DMOZ in itself has become something it probably set out to get away from - it’s a website that is now controlled by the human editors that abuse their own positions for financial gain thus allowing non important websites the chance of a possible boost. I’m not saying every editor is taking a bit of extra cash for the job but it is near enough impossible to get listed on the directory. I have personally submitted around 5 or 6 different websites, following all the guidelines, that was around 2 years ago and still nothing. I even contacted an editor and asked what the deal was. He told me that my websites were either not visible or there are no editors in my selected categories.

Well obviously times change and so do seo methods of getting more traffic. So over the past few years I’ve been looking at how important being listed in DMOZ is. On my journey for answers I realised that it is not as half as important as it once was, Google’s algorithm now looks at many different factors such as links, content and updates (plus 101 different variables). If you get listed in DMOZ you won’t see the dramatic increase in SERP positions you may have once though you would get. There are plenty of other good quality directories out there that provide good links for a small price.

You can see in the image below that DMOZ are taking a hit in 2007 as more and more people are just fed up with the level of service they provide.

Conclusion – don’t waste your time with DMOZ and definitely don’t pay an editor for inclusion, this will only lead to disappointment. By all means submit your website but don’t sit there waiting for your website to get listed. Is there still time to save DMOZ – doubtful.