Open Directory Gathers Momentum with Agreements with Hotbot and Lycos.
- Jun. 1, 2000
The Open Directory Project (formerly NewHoo) got a major shot in the arm recently with co-operative agreements with both Lycos and Hotbot. The Open Directory Project is a human edited directory guide to the Internet, similar to Yahoo, but with two major differences:
Open to Everyone
The creators of the Open Directory Project wanted the directory to have an open licensing policy, meaning anyone could use the directory, unlike Yahoo, which is a proprietary directory and can only be used by Yahoo itself. In November, 1998 Netscape bought the Open Directory and pledged to allow open access to the directory. In fact, the name was changed from NewHoo to Open Directory by Netscape just to underscore this fact.
Edited by Volunteers
The second thing that differentiates the Open Directory from Yahoo is that the Open Directory is edited by an army of volunteers. These 10,000 volunteers (at last count) allow sites to be reviewed and included much faster than Yahoo. Of course, like any organization that depends on volunteers, it's hard to guarantee a consistent level of objectiveness or quality, but Netscape has decided the trade off is worth it.
Bold Move by Lycos
In an announcement that took several in the industry by surprise, Lycos this past April announced they were transforming themselves from a crawler based search service to a directory service, using the Open Directory information. Lycos will be adding their own layer of relevancy search functionality to the information, allowing users to still conduct searches based on keywords. Also, Lycos will also still allow searches of their existing index, but the results will be secondary to information from the Open Directory. Lycos becomes the first major player in the business to switch from being a search engine, such as Excite or AltaVista, to a directory like Yahoo. For more on Lycos, see the Lycos Capsule.
Hotbot Also Features Open Directory
Hotbot also features information from Open Directory in the Directory section on their home page, in addition to search results powered by Inktomi. It is probable that inclusion in the directory would help a sites relevancy ranking on Hotbot, resulting in higher rankings on the Search Returns. For more on Hotbot, see the Hotbot Capsule.
What This Means for You...And Us.
Now, with Lycos, Hotbot and Netscape's Home Page all featuring information from the Open Directory, the bottom line is that it's more important than ever to make sure your site is submitted to the Open Directory. We, of course, make sure this submission happens during your initial set up. The submission process is very similar to Yahoo's (see the Yahoo Capsule for more information), which means there is some work to do on most sites before submission takes place.
Further Resources - Other Articles
Important! Getting Listed in the Open Source Directory
MarketPosition Newsletter - April 99Netscape Integrates Directory
Search Engine Report - Feb 99NewHoo Becomes Netscape Open Directory
Search Engine Report - Dec 98Further Resources - Links
Open Directory Project
Links to the site, with submission forms
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