Getting listed in the ODP

[kastro]

I've been tryin to get my sites title and description changes in ODP for the last 3 weeks and I haven't gotten any response from any 1 yet. Any reason why?

i'm trying to change a mis-print in my title and my description because it dosen't properly represent my site. The editor had taken out some of our major buisness services from the description and I politley e-mailed him about it, but never got a response.

If someone could help me out it would be much appreciated. Thanks

[minnapple]

<I've been tryin to get my sites title and description changes in ODP for the last 3 weeks and I haven't gotten any response from any 1 yet. Any reason why?

katro,
I have been going through the process of getting a site reviewed for the last 6 months. Patience brother.

[keywordbuys]

With my last site I spent over a year and didn't ever get listed, but with my new site it took about 3 months.

The best advice I can give for a listing is to make sure that you submitted to the right category and subcategory, with a good desc.

When I wasn't getting listed, I was pretty tired of waiting around for months, and seemingly over a year (if you count my other site), so I wrote a category editor, stated my situation and I was listed in the index within two days. I can't say everyone is going to have those results, but if you can make a good case for being listed they just might help you out.

[Iguana]

I have been submitting various sites and pages over the last 6 months. My stuff is generally up to date pages of links to music and live reviews (not original but hopefully useful). I had succeeded only in getting 2 band pages in but I noticed that they had put them in Reviews sub-directories. I more recently submitted a number of pages to a few band categories which already had Review sub-directories and a good number were accepted.

What I learnt is that if you submit to exactly the right category then you will easily be accepted. The ODP editors do an excellent job and really know their subject - but they do have lives beyond the ODP. They may take it upon themselves to move your site to a more appropriate category but most likely they will just reject it. Ask yourself - if you were an ODP editor would you read, edit, and accept your entry into your category

In terms of timing, I just noticed today that one submission I made about 5 months ago has appeared. Another site of mine which was of interesting and original content was accepted within a week!

(edited by: Iguana at 10:19 pm (utc) on April 5, 2002)

[victor]

Let me backup Iguana's post from the "inside".

I edit some cats. I recently took over one that had several hundred outstanding submissions to review.

I'm working through them, but 20 a week is probably my upper limit -- that's a couple of hours unpaid work. So there's at least a three month delay for the last few on top of however long they've been waiting so far.

I'm doing the easy ones first. If the description and title are reasonable and match the content I'll put it in.

But if the site takes too long to access (I only got a 56k modem), does odd things with my browser (usually Opera 6.0) like Javascript errors, wants a plug-in I don't have, is hard to work out what it is about, has no submitted description, etc etc -- anything that'll take me a few minutes extra to handle -- I'll go on to the next submission instead.

I'll get back to those hard-to-handle-ones, but it'll take months. None of the problems I've listed necessarily disbar the site from ODP -- but I want to get sites in quickly, and the ones that stop me doing that go to the bottom of my pile.

I hope that's painted a realistic picture of my "in-tray" and how I work with it. I suspect this is typical of many catagories - especially the popular ones, or ones which have recently lost an editor.

I've learn a lot about website design by editing for the ODP -- mainly by having to make sense of so many bad examples. I'd recommend a stint in this role to anyone who wants a crash course in website usability.