Swerving this topic off course a little .. do you think there's a future for such a directory? I haven't used DMOZ in months and I haven't even looked at a directory in months, either. I just click onto Google and the job is done.

Have you noticed how little daylight Yahoo's once glorified directory gets these days? It's now below the page-fold when you visit yahoo.com. That to me is very significant as Yahoo's directory was their sole reason for existance and their flagship product.

Just out of interest. What do you think are directories' strength and weaknesses these days? And why should I go looking at dmoz when I've got google?

- wil

Although you say you havn't used DMOZ in ages, a lot of sites still are based off DMOZ (the microsoft search site for exmple). I don't think its going to die out... I think we, as webmasters, get the feeling it is outdated; but to new people on the Internet, or even non-frquent users, it is a great place to find stuff you need :)

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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But the principle idea of human editors will ensure that the dmoz directory will never be up-to-date. Only a machine-robot-based search engine can be close to being up-to-date with the level of information on the web these days.

I just wonder; where is the first place you type into your address bar when you want to find something on the net?

- wil

Me personally, google.com .. but thats just personal preference. Mainly because it has a much higher chance of finding code related searches. For general website though, I go to Yahoo or DMOZ ... as Google turns up too many irrelivant results. Thats just personally though

Cheers

Andy (mod)
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I haven't really thought about it until reading your post. I'd guess that I haven't used a directory to find something in close to two years.

The google toolbar is my answer..and now it comes with a very effective popup blocker feature. If what I'm looking for isn't in the first or second screen of results, I just refine the search.

Hi,

I think the main value in directories is in small, focused and maintained directories - directories like CGI Resources. Just last week I was trying to find online canadian computer retailers. This can be very difficult to do in any major search engine (hard to focus on just Canada, and too many results for a general term like online computer retailers), but using a specialized directory, I was able to find quite a few.

I do think their is much less value in trying to categorize the entire internet though, something dmoz is trying to do.

Cheers,

Alex
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The other good thing is that DMOZ uses a lot less servers to host its content. I think I am right in saying that Google.com alone, has 1,000+ servers all linked up to server their content? DMOZ wouldn't even need half of this (at least I wouldn't think so... due to the database size differences... could be wrong though ).

Just my opinion :)

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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Hi Alex

Yes, I can see where you're coming from. I dived into this train of thought top-down from DMOZ and Yahoo and others.

Your result sounds good, although a similar search locally here returns some awfully designed sites that have not been updated in years. I guess this is what you get when everyone and his friends can throw up a website these days.

Hey, heard the one about making it mandantory to have a license to go online? :-)

- wil