Dmoz New Development - Aol Search Business Unit Looking Into What Odp Will Become
December 10, 2006
I just logged into the editor forums at the DMOZ or ODP (Open Directory Project) and there was new update today December 10, 2006. I find it worthy enough for mainstream release, so I’m gong to mention a few things here in the interest of public information. Initially after posting this entry I was contacted about a potential confidentiality breach, so I have edited out some of the specifics (like direct quotes), but still have relayed the main idea below.
10 Ideas To Save Dmoz | The Future Of The Open Directory Project
December 10, 2006
DMOZ, also known as the open directory project, is the largest human edited directory in the world and one of the most ‘trusted’ link directories on the internet. However, in recent years it’s been steadily falling in popularity and the search engines no longer regard it as highly as they once did. More importantly for users, search engines have become progressively smarter and more sophisticated, which means that human edited directories like DMOZ aren’t as important.
Unfortunately, despite the good information DMOZ had to offer, there were several major problems. DMOZ always took forever to get your site updated or even added, editors update the categories so infrequently that the data was often old and the site itself was rather bland and boring.
However, DMOZ was still chugging along until a couple of weeks ago, when the editor and submissions portions of the website inexplicably went dead.; there haven’t been any updates since September. The question now is what are they (the AOL Search business group) going to do about it?
Profile Of Meta Search Engine Mooter.com
December 2, 2006
Name: Mooter.com
Market Capital: Very small. They are currently going public and are in the process of raising $8 million. They have some revenue, but are losing more money than they are making because of a strong focus on research and development.
Alexa Traffic Rank: 129, 343
Overall Competitiveness: Minimal. They are extremely small and present very little competition. Their value lies in the fact that even a small meta search that is losing money can make thousands, and even millions of dollars by going public, and that they benefit from implementing programs like pay-per-click advertising.
Years in Business: Since 2001.
Strategy: To survive in the Meta search engine marketplace, they are attempting to grow in their niche marketplace and raise revenues by going public. This will enable them to grow and develop new and better technology, perhaps leading them to a reasonably successful revenue model in the future.
