The video is Matt’s response to a user-submitted question, which said: “What role does being in DMOZ play in rankings? I see some website in my niche ranked No. 1 and the only reason is because they are in DMOZ as their content is at best poor. Getting into DMOZ is impossible nowadays, so why does Google still use it?”

“It’s hard to tell sometimes why a site is ranking,” says Cutts. “Historically, Google has the link: operator, which returns the backlinks or some subset of backlinks to people, but we don’t show every single backlink that we know of in response to link: because we show that more on the Webmaster Tools side. You can see your own backlinks, but we don’t give a full list of all the backlinks to the people who would compete with you, and I think that that’s a pretty good balance overall.”

“So just because if you do link: you might see a link from DMOZ, and as a result think that’s why it’s ranking, it could be that there are other links,” he says. “High quality links that you aren’t seeing – that are coming from CNN, New York Times or something like that, so don’t just automatically infer from looking at the backlinks that you have either from Google or from Yahoo or even a third-party tool that that’s really all the links or all the links that Google trusts or anything like that.”

Cutts then gets more into DMOZ specifically.

“DMOZ has been really great in terms of being a really good resource for people, but it is starting to show its age a little bit so there’s two or three sort of updates I can give you on how Google thinks about DMOZ, and how it treats the Open Directory Project,” he says. “There was a version of the Open Directory that Google had – the Google Open Directory or something like that – which would take Open Directory data and add value by sorting the stuff by PageRank, and not as many people were using that, so even though it was one of the first things we introduced (other than straight web search), I think recently we took steps to sort of turn that off.”

“It might still remain in a few properties, for example, in some Asian countries, it’s a little slower to type so it might be a little faster to browse through a directory so we don’t promise we’ve turned that off everywhere, but we have turned it off for a lot of different Google properties,” he says.

Cutts then discusses how Google will sometimes use DMOZ to fill in snippets in search results from time to time. We’ve discussed this at WebProNews in the past. Google will use the snippets created by DMOZ editors that tell it what a page is when they otherwise can’t see it, like if it’s blocked with robots.txt, for example.

According to Cutts, Google has been testing whether or not to even continue doing this, and says it’s too early to say whether this practice will remain in place or not.

“The last thing to know about DMOZ is that it’s not the case that there’s some special boost or some kind of reward for being in DMOZ,” says Cutts. “A link from DMOZ is worth the same as a link from anywhere else. It’s just the Open Directory tends to have a little bit higher PageRank. So as a result, a link from DMOZ might carry a little more PageRank, but if you get a link from a very highly reputable source…that can easily carry just as much or more PageRank than getting a link in the Open Directory Project.”

Interestingly enough, he suggests trying to get a reputable source to write about you, and Google has been placing a great deal of emphasis on content authors in search lately, what with the authorship markup and Google Profiles in search results.

A few samples of comments we received about this:

"I have actually personally heard from someone who has bribed the editors multiple times to get listed with great-quick results."

1) It does not accurately include even a representative subset of the wealth of quality information on the Web
2) Allegations of corruption
3) Lethargy and languorous posting policies and procedures then DMOZ would disappear overnight."

Former Editor’s Take on the Corruption

M.J. Taylor, who is a moderator in our WebProWorld forum says she used to be a DMOZ editor. She addressed such corruption in a thread, and being how this is such a popular topic of discussion for our readers, I thought her two cents would be worth sharing here as well. She writes:

I can tell you why some websites got nixed in my categories. Sites that were very low quality, perhaps still under construction, for example, didn’t get listed. Sites that were second sites for the same business didn’t get listed. Affiliate sites were deleted.

Editors were very closely watched. I really find all the tales of corruption to be far fetched, as there was a great deal of supervision by very suspicious superior editors. I’m not saying there wasn’t corruption; I’m saying it got caught quickly.

Taylor says she was an editor for a few years and understands a little of the inside workings. For this reason, she says, maybe she finds it "easier to relax" because she knows "it isn’t personal."

What do you think? Comment here, or join the conversation at WebProWorld.

Dmoz has been brought back into the discussion as Google’s Matt Cutts appeared in a new Google Webmaster Help Video answering the following user question:

Why is Google still taking notice of DMOZ? Many have alleged that the editors are corrupt. It’s impossible to get them to list a site even if it is very relevant to a specific area.

"I know that people do have complaints about Dmoz, and we don’t show it in our one-Google-sort of tabs at the top of the page like we used to in previous years, but in some countries, it can be very hard to type in queries. It can take a lot of time," says Cutts. "For example in something like Chinese or Japanese or Korean, sometimes it might be easier to browse by clicking, rather than typing in the query, and so especially in those sorts of countries, it can be very helpful to show Dmoz."

"But we don’t use Dmoz in a lot of the ways that we used to. We don’t show the Dmoz categories or the Open Directory categories beneath the snippet, and we used to do that," he adds. "We don’t show it on the main page like we used to anymore. So if you’re frustrated, you can always try a different category that you also think is relevant. You can always go to editors up the chain. But in general, if you can’t get into Dmoz, I wouldn’t necessarily worry about it. There are a lot of other great places to get links across the web."

Dmoz continues down the slope it’s been on for quite some time in terms of unique visitors. Google not giving it as much play certainly must play at least some role in this. It does get over 18% of its referrals from Google:

Dmoz on its Own Future

Dmoz swears it still has plenty of life left in it, so if you believe the editorial department, there may be new opportunities from Dmoz down the road. In a post earlier this year, reflecting upon the last decade, Bob Keating, Dmoz editor-in-chief said, "Over the ’00 decade, DMOZ has grown to be one of the most successful collaborative projects on the web. It has outlasted its commercial counterparts, and continues to be relevant in the search industry. The keys to its longevity and usefulness are its dedicated community, its open, collaborative editorial model, its non-commercial nature, and open data distribution channel."

"While DMOZ receives hundreds of editor applications, and lists thousands of websites each week, it needs a new Plan – a new blueprint for the future of how the web is organized, and how human organized data is consumed," he says. "Using traditional web directories as a means for information discovery is a thing of the past. However, the need for organized web-based content continues to grow exponentially. The future of DMOZ does not lie merely in improving its toolset, making it more SEO friendly, or convincing others of its collective brilliance. Its future lies in turning the entire thing on its head."

Keating went on to list some goals for this decade, including the development of an API for Dmoz data to allow editors and developers to write new apps using it. He also wants to transform Dmoz from a fixed-path directory to "the largest faceted system for organizing information on the web," have it become a "major influencer" for bringing the semantic web out of the lab/enterprise and into the entire web, and transforming Dmoz into a "suite of products with multiple levels of participation and engagement."

Things have been pretty quiet on the Dmoz front since then. The only updates on the Dmoz blog have been from editors talking about their experiences editing specific categories. Perhaps that is because some of the aforementioned goals are in the process of being realized behind the scenes.

Note: With a great deal of talk in the comments about corrruption, you may be interested in hearing from a former editor on the topic. Read here.

Do you think Dmoz has a place in the future of the web? In the future of search? What kinds of apps would you like to see built upon a Dmoz API? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Either way it’s ceratinly not a money issue. The Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t appear to have too many problems raising money. "Every year, the number of people donating to the Wikimedia Foundation has increased, and the total dollar amount has increased too," Gardner told us. Google alone recently donated $2 million. Not that the money goes to editors (this is where it goes).

It’s quite interesting that Wikipedia’s success has come at the price of a community decline (even if in just growth). One of the biggest reasons there has been such a drop off in new editors is that it has simply gotten harder to edit entries. That’s not just because of exclusivity reasons. It has actually become more technically difficult to edit entries over the years. There is a huge usability issue, and this is much of what Lih discussed.

Lih talked about how the editorial language has gotten more vague over the years. Wikipedia used to flat out ask people to edit articles. Then it eventually got to where "anyone CAN edit."

Another factor he mentioned is that of eventualism – the belief in the Wikipedia community that people will eventually fix articles. Someone else will get to it.

Yet another factor is that there are way more rules than there used to be. It’s not that this is necessarily a bad thing. As Lih says, there is kind of more resonsiblitlity for Wikipedia to be up to quality standards now, as it has become one of the most popular sites on the web, and is often at the top of Google search results. But with more rules, comes less ease and in some cases, less enthusiasm.

If a potential editor does want to go through with playing by the rules, they have to go through an extensive interrogation process in which Lih says they are asked twenty to thirty questions.

Perhaps the biggest reason people don’t want to edit Wikipedia articles is that the markup on the actual edit pages has become much more complicated over the years. It used to be simple, and most people could easily figure it out, and now, as Lih explained, it looks like a SQL database. He referred to a usability study from the Wikimedia Foundation, in which every user struggled to get a basic grasp of the editing interface. Users largely failed to make edits correctly without repeated attempts and efforts. Not even the most tech-savvy participants were able to do it right.

Lih presented the idea of looking at lessons from other communities. He focused specifically on DMOZ. "DMOZ chose to place editorial control in the hands of a small cabal of editors, and in doing so made the directory opaque, unresponsive and outdated – the editorial policy of DMOZ killed DMOZ," he said.

Possible scenarios that could play out, as Lih suggested, include a slow, steady quality decline, flagged revisions leading to a quality increase, the inability to update in a timely manner, or the trickling in of spam, PoV/non-neutralcontent.

There is much research being put into Wikipedia and it’s continued success. Google’s relationship with Wikipedia (whatever the extent of that may be, Lih simply calls it an interesting one and pretty much leaves it at that), appears to be helping keep Wikipedia in the forefront of search results for many, many queries. That’s now though. Things change. There are other Wiki-style information sites out there, some of which have much more user-friendly editorial processes. Is it possible that Wikipedia will go the way of DMOZ?

It has become easier for researchers to obtain more data about Wikipedia in the last few years, and researchers are exploring a variety of ways to improve the process. Perhaps Wikipedia will be able to correct some of its issues before they snowball too much.

Read our interview with Gardner here.