What was DMOZ?

DMOZ was an editorially managed US web directory that ceased operations in 2017.

What was the Open Directory Project?

The ‘Directory Mozilla’ was a manually maintained web directory maintained by volunteer editors. Also known as the ‘Open Directory Project’ (ODP), it was, for many years, the highest-quality web directory that got by without an annoying flood of advertising, thanks to the work of its many volunteer editors.

Since its shutdown by AOL, there are several domains that host static versions of the site. The site that is included in the Wikipedia article on DMOZ is dmoztools.net.

Does a DMOZ entry still have search engine optimisation benefits?

Since AOL has kept the domain dmoz.org and has not passed it on, all of the trust signals that were built up by the site over the years have been lost.

If a site was featured on the previous DMOZ site and is now found on one of the mirrored sites, it is assumed that these sites are nowhere near as trusted as the original dmoz.org.

Steve Paine
12.02.2021