DMOZ
The web, catalogued by hand
DMOZ, the Open Directory Project, was a human-edited catalogue of the web maintained by tens of thousands of volunteer editors from 1998. Its data fed Google's own directory and hundreds of clones. AOL closed it on 17 March 2017 after search made directories obsolete.
Timeline [edit]
- 1998
-
5 June 1998
Launch
GnuHoo launches
An open, volunteer-edited answer to the Yahoo directory.
-
November 1998
Acquisition
Netscape acquires the directory
It becomes the Open Directory Project; the data stays open.
- 2000
-
2000
Peak
Google uses DMOZ for its directory
Being listed becomes a coveted ranking signal.
- 2004
-
2004
Peak
Around four million sites, 90,000 editors
The largest human-curated index of the web.
- 2011
-
20 July 2011
Decline
Google shuts its own directory
The main consumer of DMOZ data walks away.
- 2017
-
28 February 2017
Shutdown announced
AOL announces the closure
No reason is given.
-
17 March 2017
Shutdown
DMOZ goes offline
Volunteers mirror the data as Curlie.
How it looked [edit]
The site through time
Browse dmoz.org as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
Ownership [edit]
Key figures [edit]
| Metric | Value | As of | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registered accounts ▲ | 90,000 | 2004 | Reported Volunteer editors at the project's height |
Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate
Why it shut down [edit]
Official line: AOL closed the Open Directory Project on 17 March 2017 without giving a reason, ending nearly nineteen years of volunteer-edited web cataloguing.
Our analysis: DMOZ was built for a web small enough to be sorted by humans, and it kept going long after that stopped being true. Search engines made browsing categories pointless for users, and SEO spam made volunteer editing a permanent siege. Its data outlived it: DMOZ powered Google's directory and countless clones for years.
History [edit]
The last great human index
Launched on 5 June 1998 as GnuHoo, then NewHoo, and finally the Open Directory Project, DMOZ set out to do what Yahoo's directory did, but with volunteers and an open licence. Netscape bought it within months, and it passed to AOL with the Netscape acquisition; the data stayed free for anyone to use.
At its height DMOZ listed over four million sites in more than a million categories, maintained by roughly 90,000 volunteer editors, each responsible for a small branch of the tree. Google used DMOZ data for its own directory until 2011, and hundreds of sites republished the whole thing. For a while, being listed in DMOZ was a genuine ranking signal, which is why getting an editor's attention became an entire SEO subculture.
Overrun by search and spam
Two forces ended it. Search engines got good enough that nobody browses categories to find a website any more, and the flood of submissions from people who wanted a link rather than a listing made volunteer moderation exhausting. The project's own community shrank and turned inward, with long-running complaints about unresponsive editors and stalled applications.
AOL announced the closure in February 2017 and DMOZ went offline on 17 March 2017, with no stated reason. Volunteers immediately mirrored the final data as Curlie, which still runs, and the last complete human map of the web sits frozen in the Internet Archive.
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Sources [edit]
- RIP DMOZ: The Open Directory Project is closing Search Engine Land 28 February 2017 [archived]
- Dmoz Directory to shut down on March 14, 2017 gHacks 4 March 2017 [archived]
Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).