WebProNews

DMOZ has now officially been around for 11 years. AOL is honoring this birthday with a blog post on the AOL Search Blog. It says:

From its humble beginnings 11 years ago, DMOZ has grown to be the largest human-edited directory on the Web. Today, on the websites anniversary, we take a look at DMOZ's influence on the web.

Before there were specialized search engines, like job seekers, there was DMOZ. Today, contributors still take the time to sort through web content and organize listings into helpful categories on a wide spectrum of topics. The online community has grown such a large directory of information that thousands of search engines still rely on the focused site listings.

Unfortunately for the well-known directory, its 11th year hasn't exactly been the greatest. I talked about this in a recent article. Unique visitors (and visits in general) have fallen significantly in a year's time.

Unique visitors



Visits



"There are numerous ways that people get information from the web. Depending on the circumstances, some people begin by using search engines such as Google, AOL, Yahoo and MSN; at other times, a directory-based approach such as the one DMOZ offers may provide the better path to the desired information," says Emily Kayser on the DMOZ Blog.

Her words echo a similar post from a while back, when DMOZ was looking for a little "R-E-S-P-E-C-T." A common theme among WebProNews reader comments was that they need to give a little respect to get respect themselves. Many feel that they just don't get responses from the site's editors, and are unable to get their sites listed. So suffice it to say, not everybody is as excited about DMOZ's birthday as DMOZ is. Here's a recent tweet for example:

Is this fair though? It will be interesting to see whether or not DMOZ can pull itself out of the slump it has found itself in. They are actively looking for editors, in fact calling for them on the birthday blog post. Perhaps YOU can help DMOZ get a little respect.

What do you think about DMOZ after 11 years? What has it done well? Where does it need to improve? Tell us what you think.