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-Edited
I did go to the resource zone to inquire about the status of the site. It is not rejected. Last time I posted there, about 3 months ago, they said it is still waiting for approval along with like 20 million other sites.
I didn't mean to whine. It just surprises me how dmoz works. Sorry if I offended anyone.
[edited by: Raymond at 2:19 pm (utc) on Mar. 29, 2004]
Craig
The primary purpose of this forum is to exchange ideas and information about the directories, and so we ask that that you refrain from questions such as "Is my site okay to submit?" or "Why doesn't LookSmart like my site?"
And please remember: No whining is allowed.
When will DMOZ end... we'll all be happier.
I won't, I'm always chuffed when I submit a site and it gets added, sometimes within days and sometimes within 6 months.
Someone mentioned about how to find the editor, they usually have a link at the bottom of the page, if there is none then you work your way up until you find one, myself I think its best to wait at least 3 months before trying to contact them.
If those things happen, it will be quite the relief. (-:
No more SEO's whining that ODP is causing them financial loss becuase they have to get into Google, and they will become poverty stricken since we refused to list them.
It's such total nonsense. I submitted a brand new site to Google last week, not in ODP, not anywhere else, no links from anywhere, and it was listed in two days.
But it does work. It does live up to what it set out to do: build a directory.
- It adds 3000 to 4000 sites daily -- far more than any other directory.
- It has more categories and a more detailed structure than anything else too.
Oh, it didn't add your site. Too bad.
There are many places that directory entries are sourced from.
- Newspapers and magazines
- Billboards
- Radio and TV advertising
- Product packaging
- Shop fronts
- Delivery Vans and Lorries, advertising on the side of Taxis
- the 4 BILLION pages listed in the Google search engine
- Oh, and the nearly a million site suggestions in the unreviewed queue.
The unreviewed queue is the smallest of all of those options, and the one with the highest amount of spam. Not surprising that it is the one that many editors look at last, if at all.
I just wanted to tell some of you my experience.
I just checked my Link: for any changes.
I found that I now have DMOZ as a back link!
The problems are:
1. It is not in Directory.google.com yet.
2. It has been almost two years since I submitted my site.
3. The site already has decent back links and ranked #1-2 on Google and Yahoo for many target keywords before this change.
BTW, this is not a commercial site but a resource site for college students. It took two years to get in DMOZ, though.
It took two years to get in DMOZ, though.
Not so unusual. Some sites have been waiting more than four years - and are still in the queue.
Sometimes it may take several months for changes in DMOZ to show in Google's directory. C'est la vie.
- It adds 3000 to 4000 sites daily -- far more than any other directory.
Since when,
I don't recall a time where our (ODP's) net site's added (through editors "publish site") has increased to over 1000 per day.
This kind of myth brings rise to conspiracy theories and the ODP takes the slam for it.
My comment is a personal one not the view of the ODP
It seems to me that a lot of people put getting an ODP listing on their to-do stack, and then get frustrated waiting on it. My advice is really not to think of it that way in the first place. Even if your site gets listed in two weeks, that's two wasted weeks of wondering and worrying when you could have been spending them on something else.
Since nothing you could do can influence the ODP site selection process once you've submitted, then once you've made sure your site is still properly awaiting review, it's best to forget about it and work on other things. When it's added, you'll notice pretty quickly from the referrals. And if it's declined... well, how would immediately learning that we'd chosen not to link to your site change what you do, honestly? Many people email me asking for a link from my nonprofit's educational site. Many of these are "link exchange" offers that are not appropriate for our site and I do not respond to them. I am sure that these webmasters and SEO's are not sitting around waiting on a response from me, chewing their nails, checking their datebooks, and wondering if I'm ever going to make a decision. It often surprises me that people feel this way about an ODP listing.
So yes, people who really want to know if their site is declined may ask after it at the ODP forum monthly, if they choose to... but my instinct is that if you feel the need to know when your site is declined the same day or week or month that it happens, you're investing too much of your energy on it. I happen to be fond of the ODP, but it's still really just one of thousands of possible links.
Just my two cents, don't spend it all in one place. (-:
DMOZ should at the very least show the status of your submission
Agreed - a tiny piece of feedback would make the would of difference to a webmaster who values their site.
Flicker: A Dmoz link is not just a link from a single web site. It is a link from the largest directory on the net, hundreds/thousands of directorys/SEs source their data from it. Webmasters building niche directories use it as the first point of call. The value of this link in the correct category is the most important link that your site will get. No wonder that webmasters worry about it.
I agree with your sentiments that instead of worrying about it - get on with something else. Submit, check every two weeks. Write the editor a letter after 2 months. After 4 months, write to the editor above him/her. But otherwise forget it.
My 2c - again - not every site is worthy of inclusion, so much spam - you have to ask yourself honestly does your site appear to be one of these? If so concentrate on getting valuable unique content and adding it.
If a real unique site with content still has trouble after a huge amount of time (6 months) - try writing to one of the high up editors - they have their intentions in the right place but will be harsh if you are wasting their time.
Though DMOZ (I know that meta's read here)! - if you have the slightest budget at all please please put in something that lets a well intentioned genuine webmaster see the status of their submissions - a one line rejection reason, an in progress etc, would do wonders for Public Relations - if you made it public as well (no links but the url in a list) - we could all see the crap that editors have to deal with and some of the critisms would diminish.
Oh, it didn't add your site. Too bad.
That's exactly the kind of flipant, elitist attitude so many editor's project to the public. Thank you for confirming the sterotype.
I too have a (commercial) site that has been sitting "in line" for a rediculous amount of time, a fact that is compunded by the fact that sites have been added in the interim that were not even REGISTERED until after I had submitted my site, much less submitted. That, compunded by the fact that we are the ONLY site in our category that is a member in good standing with the BBB, not to mention the number of dead links, mirrors, and multiple listings that seem to escape the attention of the category editor (unless they are reported), makes the whole process seem that much more imbalanced and subject to abuse and complacency in general.
Does DMOZ owe us lowly webmaster's anything? You bet. Webmaster's create the content that is the very reason for DMOZ's existence. Without our content, where would DMOZ be? No content, no resource, plain and simple.
Further, in the early days of DMOZ, when it was just a fledgling project, such attitudes as "we'll get to it and list it if we feel like it" were NEVER heard.
Editor's were EAGER to build their categories and include the best possible sites. Now...this exclusive "club" has allowed the lack of overall supervision and loose editing requirements to not only stale the directory, but to create a adversarial atmosphere between themselves and hardworking, legitimate webmasters and site owners.
Can a site be successful WITHOUT a dmoz listing? Sure. Ours does very well. Can a Dmoz listing give one hell of a boost in traffic? Damn right.
So...perhaps there is a simple solution to all of this. Let's stop the attitude that any webmaster who wants to know why they haven't been listed after a reasonable amount of time (and 6+ months is MORE than reasonable) is simply "whining", and realize that they have every right to be listed in DMOZ if they meet all the requirements to be listed there, and treat them as they deserve to be treated...as the ones who are the REASON for your work, not an interruption of it.
Being a volunteer editor swings both ways. No one twisted anyone's arm to volunteer, so no one should have to twist it to get them to do the job they volunteered for.
/END OF RANT
As I understand it, it's impossible to do this without also making it easier for spammers to barrage us with garbage more frequently. This would definitely slow the review of submitted sites down for everybody, whereas I'm still failing to grasp the benefit to webmasters of being able to check a site's status on a daily basis. Once you've submitted it and checked with the ODP help forum to ensure that it's reached the proper queue, there's nothing else you could possibly do but wait anyway. And if the site is declined for a listing, how would it help you to be informed of that immediately? Would this knowledge actually change your behavior in any way?
Because if there isn't some tangible benefit to it for you guys, I'd think you'd be happier with the route that invited less spam and therefore kept webmaster submissions moving at a quicker pace.
I know it's hard for webmasters to understand/accept, but processing webmaster submissions ISN'T actually the job we volunteered for. We volunteered to improve the directory. A large part of that is adding sites, to be sure... but I find fewer than half of the sites I add to the directory in the submissions pool. I don't even *have* to look in the submissions pool at all if I don't care to, as long as I keep on adding good sites, removing bad ones, and (as I've spent most of this week doing) hunting down the new URL's for sites that have moved.
In the early days I think there was very much less spam, the ODP being a less popular website, and so the signal-noise ratio in the submissions pool may have been so high that it was usually the best place to look for new sites to add. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. I'm lucky if one in four submitted sites I review is worth listing in the category it was submitted to... and mine aren't even the high-traffic categories. )-:
You're quite right that there would be no need for an Internet directory if it weren't for dedicated webmasters providing information to the world. We have listed and categorized some 4 million of their best sites, and will continue to add more of their excellent sites to that on a daily basis. I think that does show respect and admiration for the work of webmasters as a whole, myself. I don't see the connection between that and some obligation to quickly or positively review any *particular* site, though. The Internet is an entirely collective effort, and it would be great hubris for any single webmaster to feel entitled to special treatment on the basis of how cool and valuable the Internet is as a whole (I say this part not as an editor but as a webmaster myself, by the way).
That's exactly the kind of flipant, elitist attitude so many editor's project to the public. Thank you for confirming the sterotype.
You should check out the attitudes that a few of the editors have in the resource zone dot com. No webmasters dare to say anything bad to the editors there. They almost behave like peasants in front of nobles and kings in the 1700s. It is quite sad.
>please please put in something that lets a well intentioned genuine webmaster see the status of their submissions ...
Editors would like to be able to search unreviewed, but we don't even have that capability. And the current design (separate queue for unreviewed submittals for each category) doesn't facilitate this kind of query. In fact, it's well-nigh impossible. It would take a database redesign. And, while this is on editors' "20 most wanted" list, it's not at the top of that. So: it is very safe to predict that regardless of what happens, THIS can't possibly happen within the next year.
>a one line rejection reason...
You're thinking of an editor like an egg-sorter: "good egg, bad egg, good, good, bad, bad, bad. category AA done, switch to category A." That kind of zero-dimensional view of editing clouds your judgment and your thinking, and will continue to cause you endless frustration. Because editing is nothing like that whatsoever.
It's more an easter egg hunt. A submittal doesn't lay an egg on a conveyor belt, it hides a hint somewhere in the park. And, this is the really really important bit, the editors aren't looking for clues, they're looking for eggs. They don't get credit for following up clues, they get credit for finding eggs. They don't look in the parts of the park where the clues are, they look where they feel like looking.
True, this doesn't represent submitters' interests: and it isn't supposed to. It represents SURFERS' interests, and the theory is that a random sampling of a few thousand surfers, each picking at random something they'd be interested in, is the best way available of determining what all surfers would be interested in.
So you're looking for someone beholden to you because you're a webmaster, and there's nobody like that here. You're looking for someone whose job is to follow your clues, and they're all out there eating someone else's chocolate eggs. You're looking for someone whose notion of "decision" is yes/no, and they're out there building the world's most complex decision tree; you're looking for a robotic assembly line, and they're going in all directions implementing the world's largest manual random-walk simulator. You're looking for someone to lay down the law on new procedures of your choosing; they all signed up because they like the procedures already in effect, and love the freedom. You're looking for someone concerned about the feelings of webmasters whose sites are rejected, and they're fantasizing about blunt instruments and sharp pincers applied to spammers who've wasted their time with submittals of useless sites.
Might I suggest that you're looking in the wrong place? There are zillions of sites whose main purpose in life is fulfilling webmasters' every need, and you will surely be able to find one that does all the things you want. There is only one ODP, and it's doing something completely different.
Since nothing you could do can influence the ODP site selection process once you've submitted
Resubmitting
Contacting an editor
Posting to ODP forum
Want to get listed? Use social engineering. Editors are only humans after all.
Dosen't work - it overwrites the old submission with a new date
>Contacting an editor
Dosen't work
>Posting to ODP forum
Dosen't work - only gives you a submission status.
The ODP is owned/maintained by the AOL monster - really can't it scrape together a few dollars?
>> please please put in something that lets a well intentioned genuine webmaster see the status of their submissions ...
Editors would like to be able to search unreviewed, but we don't even have that capability. And the current design (separate queue for unreviewed submittals for each category) doesn't facilitate this kind of query. In fact, it's well-nigh impossible.
> It would take a database redesign.
I beg to differ. It would take a single new table and a cron job.
>> a one line rejection reason...
> You're thinking of an editor like an egg-sorter:
No I'm thinking of the line that is added by the editor when making a change - reason for change. That little bit of information is already there.
> It's more an easter egg hunt. A submittal doesn't lay an egg on a conveyor belt, it hides a hint somewhere in the park.
If the ODP had a better reputation - everyone would know about it, submittals would become a much better source of easter eggs, and editors could spend less time looking at dustbins and the sides of tradesmens vans for urls.
> So you're looking for someone beholden to you because you're a webmaster
No - I'm looking for a response to my taking the time to submit a quality website to the appropriate category, with an instantly usable description, I would call it basic manners. I know that 90% (or whatever) of submissions may not be like that - but for those that are it is disheartening that this is the current state of play.
> You're looking for someone to lay down the law on new procedures of your choosing; they all signed up because they like the procedures already in effect, and love the freedom. You're looking for someone concerned about the feelings of webmasters whose sites are rejected, and they're fantasizing about blunt instruments and sharp pincers applied to spammers who've wasted their time with submittals of useless sites.
It takes months of hard work to produce a site. I've had sites kept out of the ODP due to competitors editing the category, each time I submit I have to wonder is the same happening.
> Might I suggest that you're looking in the wrong place? There are zillions of sites whose main purpose in life is fulfilling webmasters' every need
OK I know your being flippent - this isn't about getting advice on coding or paying a fortune to appear in a directory that will be dropped next week. This is about be included in a resource that exists to provide everyone with the best categorised guide to the internet, no strings attached. It is the only one of it's kind, and a necessary part of the business of producing a serious website.
> There is only one ODP
Well I agree here, shame though really, 90% of search is google, 90% of directories are ODP based... webmasters can't just ignore them.
I really don't understand this? Same url/domain blocked from resubmittal for 2 months? Very easy to do. Damn - let me at this database and add a few lines code!
The attitude at the moment with the ODP editors et al - towards webmasters is like guilty until proven innocent - we're not all spammers - so why treat us like we are?
That's exactly the kind of flipant, elitist attitude so many editor's project to the public. Thank you for confirming the sterotype.
I'm sorry to say that this is true in my experience also - coupled with the fact that some editors in a few competetive categories are not exactly impartial...
DMOZ is fire and forget for me - I was recently surprised when a clients site got a listing 10 months after my contract with them finished.
DMOZ isn't mission critical for me (and, hence, not for my clients) because I don't expect a free link from anybody else - so why should I get one from DMOZ.
