This day in search marketing history: February 28

R.I.P., DMOZ

In 2017, DMOZ – The Open Directory Project that used human editors to organize websites — announced it was closing as of March 14.

By this time, DMOZ had been mostly forgotten as a resource. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that it took so long.

DMOZ was born in June 1998 as “GnuHoo,” then quickly changed to “NewHoo,” a rival to the Yahoo Directory at the time. It was acquired by Netscape in November 1998 and renamed the Netscape Open Directory. Later that month, AOL acquired Netscape, giving AOL control of The Open Directory.

Read all about it in RIP DMOZ: The Open Directory Project is closing.

Also on this day

New business openings nearly match pre-pandemic levels, Yelp says

2022: However, most major cities actually experienced a decrease in openings.

Etsy sellers to pay 30% higher transaction fees beginning in April

2022: A “considerable portion” of the revenue from the fee increase would be reinvested into the marketplace.

New Google Lighthouse extension for Firefox goes live

2020: Firefox had not yet reviewed the extension, so it got automatically categorized as “not a Recommended Extension.”

Optimization scores, recommendations and their impact on Google Partner agencies

2020: Google said Partner agencies would continue to have “control and autonomy” as it put more emphasis on auto-generated recommendations.

Google’s new treatment of nofollow links has arrived

2020: Google was about to begin treating the nofollow link attribute as a hint, rather than a directive, for crawling and indexing.

Google experiments with public search profile cards

2020: Limited to India, the Google+-like feature gave personal brands and individuals some control over their own search results.

In feature battle with Google, Yelp improves restaurant waitlist functionality

2020: Yelp was rolling out its Notify Me feature, which supported Yelp Waitlist.

Google’s CTR answer just what you’d expect, and this is why SEOs go bananas

2019: Would Google give us a clear statement that outright said it does not currently use CTR directly in their core search ranking algorithm? Of course not.

Google opens complaint form to crack down on fake info in Maps

2019: Google launched the Business Redressal Complaint Form to allow searchers and users to report fraudulent activity relating to businesses Google Maps.

Amazon extends Sponsored Products to AmazonFresh for CPG brands

2019: Consumer packaged goods brands could extend their campaigns to their products sold in the AmazonFresh delivery program.

Multifaceted featured snippets begin rolling out in Google search results

2018: Multifaceted featured snippets would be surfaced for queries that were sufficiently broad enough to allow for more than one interpretation of what was submitted.

Rand Fishkin leaves Moz, announces a new start-up

2018: After 17 years of working at the company he co-founded, Fishkin was starting a new company around influencer and audience intelligence.

Study: 11 voice search ranking factors analyzed

2018: 63.6% of voice search results didn’t use Schema at all.

Google gives SEO tips on how to handle day-long site closures

2017: Tips from Google’s John Mueller on what to do if you needed to turn off your website for a period of time and worried your Google rankings will drop.

After rare Google confirmation of on-site penalty, Natural News is back in Google’s index

2017: HealthNews.com confirmed being reincluded in the Google index after being deindexed last week.

Now Official: Google Adds Restaurant Menus To Search Results

2014: Google announced that it’s now showing restaurant menus as a OneBox-style answer at the top of its U.S. search results.

AdWords Mobile App Download Campaigns Get Deeper Reporting In Google Analytics

2014: New reports on mobile app campaign performance included day parts, destination URLs and keyword positions.

Tweet Showing How Google Itself Is A “Scraper Site” Goes Massively Viral

2014: Dan Barker did a search for [what is a scraper site], which brought up Google’s own web definition at the top of the results, which technically outranked the original source of the content.

New Bing Ads Editor Version Now Available

2014: New features included the ability to rename campaigns and ad groups in the Browser pane.

Search In Pics: Yahoo’s 19th Birthday Cake, Google Jugglers & Canadian KitKat Android Statue

2014: The latest images showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.

Google Testing Android/Chromebook-Like Navigation Element For Web Site

2013: Google was testing another navigation method to find all the various Google services and products.

Facebook Shares How People Are Using Graph Search: Finding Friends Tops List

2013: Facebook suggested some ways to go beyond that, for those who had the new search feature.

Bing Maps Adds Variety Of Hi-Res Image Improvements

2013: The prime feature that Bing was touting involved what it calls “top of the world” imagery — those hi-res, top-down images.

Majestic SEO Now Supports 9 Languages

2013: The languages they currently support included English, Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian.

New German Law Will Allow Free “Snippets” By Search Engines, But Uncertainty Remains

2013: A proposed German copyright law wouldn’t require search engines like Google to pay to show short summaries of news content. But uncertainty remained about how much might be “too much” and require a license.

In Another “Right to Be Forgotten” Case, UK Officials Threaten Legal Action Against People Posting Pictures Of Convicted Killer

2013: UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve threatened legal action against anyone posting pictures of convicted killer Jon Venables online.

From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

3 tips for optimizing paid social campaigns for seasonality (SMX West 2020)

Day One: Search Marketing Expo West 2012 Live Blog Recap

SMX West 2008 Day Three Coverage

Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

2022: How to turn data into insights and impactful SEO strategies by Maria White

2020: How to use machine learning (if you can’t code) to help your keyword research by Andy Chadwick

2019: There are fundamental problems with relying only on Domain Authority metrics by Amit Raj

2018: Unit economics: The foundation of a good SEM campaign by Kevin Lee

2017: Link free or die by Julie Joyce

2017: Sharing is caring: Click share and post-holiday shopping success by Matt Lawson

2014: 6 Essentials Of E-Commerce SEO You’re Probably Still Missing by Tom Schmitz

2014: How Fast Is SEO Really Changing? A Look Back At Search Ranking Factors by Nate Dame

2014: When To Consider A Backlink Cleanup by Jon Ball

2013: Have You Considered Privacy Issues When Using Robots.txt & The Robots Meta Tag? by Tom Schmitz

2013: The Real Reason Why Google Is Dropping The Tablet vs. Desktop Distinction? It’s The User Context, Stupid! by Larry Kim

2012: 3 Design Catastrophes To Avoid & 1 Great SEO Solution For Multinational Website Homepages by Chris Liversidge