zerotre - 3:30 pm on Jul 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

Why doesn't a better DMOZ arise...
Though it is deemed unpolite, I will try to answer with another question: Will Google give the new entity any importance soon?
Google and DMOZ work together as "complementary" in the search process, or better said, Google uses DMOZ in the supply of search results pages in moving up websites.
Of course they give out different results, or better, different and differently assembled results, as in the example below:

My aim is to find a hostel in Rome, and I want to contact the hostel directly, not book through a service.
DMOZ scenario - With a little patience I drill down into the DMOZ categories and I get to
Top: Regional: Europe: Italy: Regions: Lazio: Localities: Rome: Travel and Tourism: Lodging: Hostels [dmoz.org]
the list offered is only of 25 websites of real hostels, with details of their location. DMOZ lists only sites of hostels alphabetically in one category all on the same level, wiping out for me all the booking services and directories of hostels, made for adsense sites and the like, that might or might not be listed in DMOZ upper categories, but not deeplinked at a lower geographical category. Localization (with unique content and usability) for DMOZ is king.

GOOGLE scenario - The results given by a Google search (hostel+Rome, the plural hostels+Rome gives much more diluted results) gives 239 results containing all the DMOZ listed websites and many more not listed in DMOZ (not yet unfortunately, either because they never submitted or because they are waiting to be, and who knows when will be listed) but diluted through many pages filled with booking services according to an algo that takes into account PageRank and other features that the owner/webmaster of a nice hostel in Rome may not have at all considered in preparing maybe using Frontpage the 6 pages necessary for his presence online. Which however will tell me everything I need to know.
That is, Google results may be fine if I want to use a booking service, tedious if I have to sort out only websites of localized hostels. As a user, to choose among 25 hostels might be satisfying, and the user will never know there are 25+ more that are not listed there.

This derives from the very basic difference between Google (or other possible search service based on algos) and DMOZ:
- Google collects and caches every possible PAGE that its spiders can reach, and pages may appear in the results just days after they are created
- DMOZ tries to categorize WEBSITES as a whole, internal secondary pages are not listed unless in very rare occasions either due to an error, intentional or unintentional, of the editor, or because the deep link is for the editor of great value for the specific category. The websites appearing in DMOZ are on the average some years old, having waited at least months to be included, and the very fact of still existing months after submitting is another argument of their legitimacy.

Therefore what can be found in a search engine and in a directory is completely different. The search engine helps the user to find results that are relevant to his search words, and if the user is not competent enough in searching he may get millions of results, while DMOZ will guide the user through narrower categories to where he may very likely find (if listed, this is always the problem with DMOZ) what he needs; but "here is the rub", for will the average user know of DMOZ? to which the reply would be: No, maybe not even 2% of Internet users know DMOZ and those who know do not commonly use it.

This brings my argument back to the beginning. The DMOZ page has nothing in its results that the many Google pages do not have, on the contrary, DMOZ has much, much less than Google. But all the sites listed in DMOZ "Hostels in Rome category" appear in the first pages of the Google results, ergo: DMOZ influences Google results making them better for the user, at least on a localized level. So even if the user does not know DMOZ, the mere fact that the websites of DMOZ-listed localized hostels in Rome are showing in the first pages of Google results may have been influenced by the DMOZ listing. Google does not do this out of affection, as if DMOZ were the last surviving, valuable dodo, but because among the existing dodos it is maybe the BEST. This dodo brings with itself a rich past of committment of innumerable valuable, Web-savvy individuals (ok, there are and have been vicious editors, but perfection is not of this world).

And this would reply to the suggestion of copying DMOZ and make it better. For years maybe Google would not give a clone even if improved greatly the same appreciation it gives to a DMOZ listing, and the fact that currently the Google algos seem to devaluate sites using the DMOZ dumps and all the DMOZ clones is just another argument in favour of the importance of back-links from DMOZ and its uniqueness in the Web community.