I pointed my browser at DMOZ today, to check if some of my websites had been indexed and was totally shocked at what I saw. DMOZ has converted it's site to German!

This is their statement:

Press Release: DMOZ converts to German 

During the past year, we have noticed that more and more users of the Open Directory does not English as a native language. More than 40% of our users now have German as their mother tongue, and only 5% of users come from the English-speaking world. To meet the needs of our user base halfway, we are moving to German as the main language of the ODP, and moving our operations to Rolle Switzerland.

Now I'm no marketing guru but I have to say this has got to be the equivalent of business suicide. They state that 40% of their users are German and only 5% come from the English speaking world. Well this may well be true, but I would hazard a guess that of the other 55% of their user base, they were all using the site in English and cannot speak any German at all.

So what have DMOZ done? They have cut off 55% of their users, not the 5% they have stated in their press release. I cannot speak German and have no motivation to even try. I've never been to Germany and probably never will go. So from my point of view DMOZ is dead. I can't use it!

Now of the 40% of the German users, I would suggest that 99% of them had some grasp of English, they must have done to have been using the English version of the site. Which further baffles me as to why DMOZ has taken this step and converted to German. The person(s) responsible for this decision should take a brain scan now.

So what does this mean to DMOZ? Well what it means is DMOZ will no longer be THE directory to post your website links into. Domain sellers will no longer be looking to see if a domain is DMOZ registered. Search engines will be allowing less and less weight for DMOZ links.

I am absolutely stunned by this move by DMOZ. It's business suicide.

Steve is the owner of Article Land, Information Booth and Crazy Linker Web Directory. Please visit his sites for further information.