Dmoz, one of the longest-running directories on the Internet, will be shutting down on March 14, 2017. Directory Listings played a huge role in the early days of the Internet, especially if they were curated by companies or online volunteers.
These directories were needed because search engines were not as efficient as they are today. For example, Dmoz predated Google. At the same time, Netscape had its main rival, the Internet Explorer browser. It should be noted that Opera has also been around since then.
So back then, in the "stone" age of the internet, they used directories to find interesting websites, and they considered it much better than using a search engine.
Webmasters of course used (and still use) directories as a way to promote their websites. Of course, there was a lot of abuse of the service, especially when automated directories were released, which displayed any website, without any human control.
Famous directories were Dmoz or Yahoo Directory.
Links to these directories could guarantee not only a steady flow of visitors to the site, but also a very strong backlink that added more credibility to the site in search engines.
The announcement published by Dmoz does not mention the reasons for terminating the service.
Dmoz is owned by AOL, and the decision to close the site must have come from AOL.
The website, as we mentioned at the beginning of the post, will stop operating on March 14, 2017.
It should be noted that from March 14th onwards, the NOODP meta tag will no longer be needed, as it was needed to prohibit search engines from using the site description that Dmoz had in its search results.
