Curlie Directory

Curlie Directory: Open Source Web Directory and Search Engine

An open source web directory and search engine, built by a community of volunteers, aiming to provide an alternative to commercial search engines.

What is Curlie Directory?

Curlie Directory (formerly known as DMOZ) is a multi-lingual open content directory of web links started by Netscape. It was built and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. Over 1 million sites are categorized in a hierarchical ontology scheme that is useful for search and navigational purposes.

It allows users to browse its directory hierarchically starting from broad categories like Arts, Business, Computers etc and drill down into sub-categories. Each sub-category provides a list of relevant websites along with short descriptions and categorizations. There is an inbuilt search engine that allows searching across the entire directory's listings.

The community of volunteer editors and their hierarchical classification system allows discovery of niche, high quality websites that are often missed by mainstream search engines and directories. Curlie aims to be an open, decentralized and human-edited alternative to algorithmic commercial search engines.

In 2017, Curlie was handed over to the non-profit ISOC (Internet Society). At the time, it contained over 4 million websites and 2 million sub-categories maintained by around 13000 editors. While the new management aims to make Curlie sustainable through grants and partnerships, the community-led model still remains the driving factor.

Curlie Directory Features

Official Links