DMOZ – www.DMOZ.org, the Open Directory Project, was once upon a time the most influential site on the web for search engine rankings. A suitable listing on DMOZ was a ticket to high rankings because every submission was reviewed by volunteers for appropriateness and accuracy – meaning listings could be trusted, at least theoretically. In that way it is a lot like Wikipedia (though DMOZ came first).

Over the years, it has become less and less useful, for several reasons. First of all, Google doesn’t have to depend on any single source for evaluating a website. Secondly, DMOZ itself has gone downhill, mostly because it became nearly impossible to get your site into it – no matter how important or legitimate you were.

This article gives Google’s comments on the current value of DMOZ (and read some of the comments to get the idea about what happened to it!).