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I have recently noticed that some webmasters can almost immediately get their sites listed...
help, anyone...
Um, "various" how?
Did they cater to corporate mouthpieces and product-pushers, or ... to librarians and researchers?
For somebody that doesn't care how it's used, your comments are pretty emotional. I'm just stating that based on our experience, DMOZ is not as important as it thinks it is and isn't something worth stressing over more than the old "submit and forget" idea.
Because, the fact is, things like "auctions" aren't well served by a website directory -- large classified ads sites like Ebay and ABEbooks OWN that niche. (So I don't ever look in the ODP or Google when I buy books or cars, and I can't imagine any sane person doing so.) Likewise for searches for local service businesses: reputable regional directories (Yellow Pages, Google Local) certainly compete with the ODP for that (with mixed results). I wouldn't look ONLY in the ODP for those. The ODP isn't even in the marketing/promotion business, so the smallest doorway-page-spinner on the web does better.
And even when I'm looking for information, the ODP is only part of the picture -- but it is an essential, irreplaceable part of a balanced information diet.
And I think this is the key to its influence. Unlike Mr. Gates (or, for that matter, the small doorway-page-spinner with megalomaniacal dreams) the ODP doesn't need to own the internet. It doesn't need to block every useful search on every other site. It's not important enough to deserve that kind of power, and it's too important to need that kind of power.
It's just another perspective on the web: useful if you need that perspective often enough to be motivated to learn how to use it -- not useful at all otherwise.
That is, its usefulness depends on the user and the use. What I think is incredibly and unconscionably arrogant is the attitude that says -- anything my friends and I don't find useful, isn't useful. The fact is, we're all off the normal cultural curve. The vast majority of people on earth don't web-publish either affiliate spam or medieval drama -- and could get along fine if both of them utterly disappeared. And all of us -- whether Viagra peddlars or Gutenberg proofers -- know that it's enough to make a difference for a tiny fraction of the world's population.
The difference between the cooperative information workers and the marketroids is that the marketroids have to know how many and who they're getting to. And I suppose it's pretty impossible for them to believe that anyone would think any other way. But -- that goes back to that insufferably arrogant solipsism: "The way I think is the only way anyone could think. I have thought all the thoughts that could be thought, I have used all the uses that could be used. My experience is not only normative but universal."
You can't survive with that attitude in an information-driven community. You just can't.
Because, the fact is, things like "auctions" aren't well served by a website directory -- large classified ads sites like Ebay and ABEbooks OWN that niche.
What I think is incredibly and unconscionably arrogant is the attitude that says -- anything my friends and I don't find useful, isn't useful.
We have 3 listings for the same site in the ODP (all unsolicited) for a site in another sector and it gets 1/3 the referrals it gets from a single listing in a similar Yahoo category.
My view that the ODP places a lot of value on itself comes from the ten thousand threads on this very subject here in these forums. I've never seen a group of people so vehemently defend something against any form of criticism with such a "it's not our problem it's yours, we're not here for you and we don't care what you think, we're here for our users" kind of attitude. It never fails that any commentary on the ODP that isn't in the brightest light brings those kinds of attitudes out.
You can find that arrogant attitude in the use of phrases like "corporate mouthpieces and product-pushers", "every pig to his own wallow.", "affiliate spam or medieval drama", "small doorway-page-spinner with megalomaniacal dreams", and "marketroids". There's no need to use thoes kinds of terms to describe people who don't use DMOZ but for some reason you feel it's appropriate.
DMOZ is a great directory. It's just not even close to the end-all-be-all that many webmasters think it is. I wager that DMOZ would never get criticized 10% as much as it does in these forums if Google didn't use it because if that were the case, nobody would care.
We have 3 listings for the same site in the ODP (all unsolicited) for a site in another sector and it gets 1/3 the referrals it gets from a single listing in a similar Yahoo category.
My view that the ODP places a lot of value on itself comes from the ten thousand threads on this very subject here in these forums. I've never seen a group of people so vehemently defend something against any form of criticism with such a "it's not our problem it's yours, we're not here for you and we don't care what you think, we're here for our users" kind of attitude. It never fails that any commentary on the ODP that isn't in the brightest light brings those kinds of attitudes out.
DMOZ is a great directory. It's just not even close to the end-all-be-all that many webmasters think it is.
I wager that DMOZ would never get criticized 10% as much as it does in these forums if Google didn't use it because if that were the case, nobody would care.
I've never seen a group of people so vehemently defend something against any form of criticism with such a "it's not our problem it's yours, we're not here for you and we don't care what you think, we're here for our users" kind of attitude. It never fails that any commentary on the ODP that isn't in the brightest light brings those kinds of attitudes out.
DMOZ is not intended to be used by serachers directly (this is just a side effect).
Answer - become an editor then put your own site in as many times as you like (at least three would be good)then just ignore any other requests - simple.
Do remember that if you do this you need to look in on your account once a quarter (4 times a year) so that you retain your editor status and can remain included in the active editor count.
Good luck
You must not spend much time on the Internet! Try posting "Harry Potter sucks" on a messageboard somewhere. Or "Why would anyone waste their time watching anime?"
Seriously, if you think it's mysterious that a group of people who like a given thing well enough to dedicate some of their valuable time to it also like it well enough to praise and defend it on Internet forums, you've been living under a rock for the last five years. What would be STRANGE is if ODP editors DIDN'T pipe up to say "Well, here's why we like it" whenever someone asked "Hey, is there anything valuable about the ODP?" on WebmasterWorld. Why on earth wouldn't we answer? If someone asked you what was good about *your* website, wouldn't you be able to think of a few things to tell them?
We're not stupid, and we know that our website isn't going to be useful to everyone. Several of us have just given rather detailed examples of kinds of people the ODP really would not be useful for at all. But for other people, it IS useful. And--since it's not a commercial enterprise, and none of us makes any money from it--we don't really care how *many* people find it useful, or what *percentage* of people you interviewed ever use it, or even *which* segment of the population is using it. We just know that the people who are using it like it, and that we like it, and that it's filling a niche that other directories don't, and we're happy.
That's really all you need to know about ODP editors and our motivations. We like organizing things, we're the kinds of people who use a directory like this, our friends are the kinds of people who use a directory like this, and so we spend time working on it. You're welcome to find us rather boring if you want to, and to find our directory unhelpful to your needs, but when you say those things in public, you shouldn't be surprised that we don't necessarily agree with your assessments.
Now, I can't get my reference site listed since there's been no category editing since at least Dec of 2004.
I read this thread and agree...They became editors, set up the category to favor themselves, then left.
Cause trying to fit into two diametrically opposed stereotypes like that is giving me a headache, man. ;-)
So people do other things: think, create, serve, give. Most of that thought and creativity and service may not be financially lucrative but these things are fulfilling. The giving certainly isn't financially lucrative, but ... at the end of the day I'm not ashamed to tell people what I did online -- and that is important (to me.)
Most people who use our data to search for online shopping opportunities probably do so through the Google Directory, as they have added search functionality we don't (so you can search the "clothing" category of the Google directory for any pages that have "scarf" on it, whereas you can't do that from dmoz.org.)
But a lot of people directly visit the dmoz.org categories for well-known authors.
So the answer is really a great big "it depends." To get anything more specific than that you'd have to sit down and pore over dmoz.org traffic logs for a long time, and since none of us especially care how any given user chooses to interface with our data, I doubt it's ever been thoroughly analyzed before, or that it's likely to be in the future.
The people being linked to primarily just get the satisfaction of knowing that their site has (essentially) earned a little Internet award.
Is that all they get? A think they get alittle more or else Mr Tabke wouldn't have mentioned it several times in his 26 steps.
Reality is, there are a few thousand volunteers doing something for some mission they share, and ... nobody really tracks who uses the result.
The ones who say they care the least the loudest usually care the most. How many times do we need to be reminded of how virtuous this group of volunteers are? Its funny the way these threads go on from "how do I get listed" to "marketroids vs. the well-intentioned (or as we are steered to think no intention) volunteer".
>I wager that DMOZ would never get criticized 10% as much as it does in these forums if Google didn't use it because if that were the case, nobody would care.Why criticise DMOZ for actions done by one of its datausers?
Wow. You're right, in the sense that its only one datauser, but come on, lets not refuse to acknowledge the weight that Google brings to this equation. Downplaying that relationship is what rubs alot of webmasters the wrong way IMO.
And for the OP - Submit and forget it. Maybe in a year you'll be the proud recipient of the coveted "Little Internet Award";).
Well, of course we care about the DIRECTORY. If we didn't care about it we wouldn't spend our time on it, and we wouldn't feel motivated to try to explain ourselves in Internet forums. (-:
You seem to be misinterpreting what Hutcheson said there. We care very much about the directory and making it into the kind of directory we want it to be, and we consider it a quality resource and are proud of it. Like anyone else who contributes to a website, we think it's good. The part we really don't care about is the web metrics. It's totally irrelevant to me whether the users prefer to use the Google directory, the AOL directory, or dmoz.org straight up. It's totally irrelevant to me what percentage of the site's users are commercial sector and what percentage are not. In fact, it's totally irrelevant to me what percentage of the world's population uses our directory for anything in the first place. As long as people are using and appreciating our work, I could care less about the web metrics. Since I think most editors feel that way, you'll have a hard time getting accurate information about it, I suspect.
When Brett wrote that article, I think Google was still listing the ODP category each site was listed in in its SERPs. At that time, I think SEOs did get a tangible benefit out of a listing, because it made surfers more likely to click on their site in the SERPs. Google hasn't done that in a long time, but the story that an ODP listing is good for SEO purposes seems to have persisted. I really do think it's a myth. If the ODP has any special impact on Google rankings at all, it must be something obscure like a theming boost. I don't for a minute think that Google is really counting those links thousands of times just because the ODP has thousands of duplicates. They don't even assign PR to most of the clone sites I've seen.
Well,
(1) Because Yahoo does it already. Anyone sincerely interested in such a program can go to Yahoo, and when they do, there won't be any interest left over to shed on us. Go ahead, we won't be offended. And there's no point in us competing in that market -- after all, it's hardly as if there is a shortage of people willing to take money to promote a site, is there ;)
(2) Because ... the ODP got editors to help out "for free" partly by promising that it WOULDN'T ever charge users or submitters -- that is, that their work wouldn't ever be restricted by considerations of anyone's personal profit. Breaking your word to the people who do your work is Dilbert-level stupid. Volunteers can always find other ways of donating effort directly to the PUBLIC good.
That's why some of us have been hoping for years that someone would open up a new way to slice the internet. So far we're still stuck in electronic versions of the cuneiform tablet age: indexes (search engines), card catalogs (directories), classified ads (classified ads), and junk mail (spam). Well, that's not exactly BAD -- after all, researchers worked that way for millenia. It's just not the progress one could hope for.
