Poor DMOZ

[SEOPTI]

Seems like they can't afford to purchase some new servers. They are always "under heavy load"

For an organisation providing listins to search engines like Google it seems like a joke. Maybe Google will buy them some new machines for Christmas? What do you think?

Maybe we should donate money for DMOZ?

[petertdavis]

I'm sure a lot of people would pay a modest fee for a listing. But, that would defeat the purpose.

Actually, I don't think having slow, or overloaded servers at DMOZ has a direct impact on Google's search. How it might affect Google is that the update from DMOZ doesn't come on a regular basis. I'm not sure how old it is, but the Google directory is updated from DMOZ it's not a live update. So, if the server problems at DMOZ are related to why Google doesn't get regular DMOZ updates, then yes it is bad, but it doesn't make Google search any slower, or even make browsing the directory at Google slower.

[g1smd]

The ODP used to produce a new dump every week. Technical problems mean that the new dump hasn't been produced for a couple of months. The problems are being fixed, but the new dump failed again a few days ago (with a lot less errors than last week). See: [dmoz.org...] and [dmoz.org...] and [dmoz.org...] for more.

The Google Directory used to take a copy of the RDF towards the end of each month. There has been no new RDF to take for the last couple of months. The Google Search Engine spiders dmoz.org anyway, so it has been adding some new sites to the SE database during that time, but not to the Google Directory.

[petertdavis]

So the end result is that everyone added to DMOZ since the last dump gets the benefit of being in the DMOZ directory, but does not get the benefit of being in any of the directories that use the DMOZ dump, including the Google directory.

Still better to be in, than not in, but I really wish they'd fix that.

[mosley700]

The suggestion was that we might donate to the ODP, not pay for listing, which we all know is contrary to the ODP's charter.
It hints at the underlying problem. AOL is not hurting for money, and they let the ODP deteriorate into its current state. Maybe some company that is willing to spend money improving the ODP should take it over? But we all know AOL will not allow that.

[EliteWeb]

ODP is not dieing its a bug, a technical problem which leads to these errors. From the TAGS it looks like its going to be fixed soon :)

[mosley700]

Current rdf dump bug aside, AOL needs to put some serious paid staff onto the project and get the ODP straightened up.

[europeforvisitors]

AOL is not hurting for money, and they let the ODP deteriorate into its current state.

AOL's revenues are down, its 2003 prospects don't look bright, and the ODP is likely to be way down on its list of priorities right now.