Google officially stops using DMOZ for source of search results snippets

Google has announced it will no longer use the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) title and descriptions as one of their sources of the search results snippets.

On March 17, DMOZ officially shut down, and since the web directory is no longer being actively maintained, Google decided to stop using the DMOZ titles and descriptions in the Google search results.

Since 2006 or so, Google would sometimes use the DMOZ description as a snippet in the Google results when it felt that description was more useful than what was available from the meta description or the site’s content.

Google wrote “[W]ith DMOZ now closed, we’ve stopped using its listings for snippeting, so it’s a lot more important that webmasters provide good meta descriptions, if adding more content to the page is not an option.”

That means that you no longer need to have the NOODP directive on your pages. That directive told Google to opt out of using the DMOZ description; with Google saying they no longer will use it, that directive is not needed anymore.

Google strongly recommends you read this document to help Google pick the best title and description for your search result snippet going forward.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.