Open Directory Project (ODP) Index

The ODP weblog is written by ODP editors to inform the general public about news of any important events happening in the world of the ODP that others may be interested in. This includes both news from within the organization, press articles on other sites, and interesting discussions that may prove useful to users and submitters alike.

http://dmoz.theblob.org/dmoz/journal.cgi (no longer available)

Google recently demoted its Open Directory Project (ODP) web directory link from the main page. To get to the directory, users now have to click on the "more>>" link at the top of the page. Google will still include ODP data. However it will be relegated to a level of lower importance. ODP descriptions and categories will not appear alongside search results.

The Open Directory project now indexes RSS feeds, alongside standard HTML websites and PDF documents. There's no change in the submission process, but in future categories will start showing 'XML' sections with links to related RSS feeds.

The Open Directory Project - also known as Dmoz - is the largest human-edited web directory on the internet with over 4.5 million reviewed sites in its index. It is maintained by a community of over 62,000 volunteer editors.

What makes the Open Directory Project unique is that it has foundations in the Open Source movement and is the only major web directory that is 100% free.

You may submit as many websites as you like to the directory for free. They even accept submissions for different sections of your website, if it contains sufficient content to warrant a listing.

You can even use the Open Directory's data on your own website, as long as you agree to comply with their free use license.

It is for these reasons that many of the major search engines and portals make use of the Open Directory Project index data.

However, the Open Directory Project is not entirely a non-commercial entity, as it is owned, hosted and administered by Netscape Communications, a division of AOL Time-Warner.

How To Optimize For The Open Directory Project Index

Visit the 'How To Submit To Web Directories' section for more information on how to submit and optimize your listings in the Open Directory index.

Here's a tip on how to select the best category for your submission. Google, which has its own version of the Open Directory index, probably sends the more traffic than any other user of the Open Directory data. Google also gives listings in the Open Directory index a boost in rankings.

As such, I recommend finding the most appropriate category to submit to by searching for it in the Google Directory, rather than in the Open Directory itself. Simply select the most appropriate category that the top ranked sites are indexed under in the Google search results.

http://dir.google.com (no longer available)

Open Directory Project Information