Forum Moderators: open
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The ODP does seem to cause SEOs and webmasters a tremendous amount of stress. In the interest of lowering the national blood pressure level, here's something important you need to understand if you're going to get the most you can out of the ODP for the least wasted effort: you're thinking of us the wrong way. We're not a website promotion service--we're a completely different service, whose goals just sometimes happen to overlap with webmasters' goals. So you really need to be approaching us in an entirely different way... not how good or bad the service we're providing you is, but whether you can make our goals coincide with yours enough to get us to benefit you. If you've been to business school, this ought to be sounding familiar to you.
To do this you have to understand what our goals are, then figure out how to get yours to mesh with that. You wouldn't, for example, expect Newsweek magazine to run keyword-packed articles about why your business is better than all the competition. Their goal isn't to promote your business; it's to provide their readers with news. If you give Newsweek an interview about a relevant news topic, however, perhaps they would publish it and you would accrue some name recognition in the process. Well, the ODP's goal is to provide websurfers with organized access to as much information as possible. So you want our users to find your clients' sites if they look for them, and we do too. Harmony!
If only all webmasters and SEO's would focus on that one point of agreement, we could all be happy. Unfortunately, a lot of people desperately want us to do other things for them, such as make their URL come up first on Google searches, or make their business sound better than their competition's, or list 20 mirrors of their site, or--most often--to list their site FIRST, this minute, before any others. These things do NOT coincide with our goals--we don't care which site comes up first in search engines as long as surfers can find useful information on the topic, we want to eliminate mirrors because our users don't like wasting their time wading through them, and adding sites in any order is equally good (if anything, it's better for our users if I add five sites to the empty category of an obscure author than five more web designers to a field that already includes hundreds.)
There ARE things you can do to improve your chances of quick listing (though they're no guarantee). They all have to do with getting it so that doing what you want accomplishes our goals. Submit >one< URL for each client to the >one< most appropriate category in the directory.* If you submit mirrors and deeplinks and portals and other tricks, or if you submit the site to lots of different categories, processing your submissions will be a pain and editors may choose to process other URLs instead. Submit each URL >once< and do not continue re-submitting it. Resubmitting will move your submission to the bottom of the queue and editors will be less likely to get to it. Resubmitting a site once it's been published is a waste of everybody's time; we don't measure "freshness." Use the >title of the company or website< for the title of your submission, and keep your description short. Editors are not likely to consider submissions titled "MATERNITY CLOTHES MATERNITY BRAS MATERNITY UNDERWEAR MAMA MONA'S MATERNITY IS THE BEST!" a high priority. Call it "Mama Mona's Maternity" and your chances for a quick review will improve. Extra keywords are just going to be trimmed by the editor anyway when she finally gets to it, so save time and leave them out. Contrary to popular belief, ODP descriptions can't affect PageRank anyway, so only send description updates if ours is actually incorrect, and leave a note explaining why; updates to fiddle with keywords are among the things that match our goals least, so don't expect to see them happen often.
Finally, pass it on. The more spam and attempts to manipulate the directory collect in our unreviewed, the longer it will take for everybody's >one< submission to get added. This is not a disaster to us--as long as we are regularly adding sites for our users, we and they don't really care if yours is among them. (This is why webmasters are always so much more upset about the large unreviewed queue than editors, by the way--it's not our goal to process submissions quickly, it's our goal to add as many good sites as possible. Sometimes both those things go hand in hand, but when the unreviewed queue is full of spam and multiple submissions, our rate of publication can actually be much faster if we do our own searching.) So one of your clients' sites languishing in unreviewed is not an emergency for us, but I understand how it may be an emergency for YOU. If you and your friends all forego spamming and simply submit stuff we're looking for in the first place, your clients' URLs would start getting listed more. You know that cooperate-defect game? Cooperate! You will always score higher in the end! Work it out on your computer if you don't believe me! (-:
Besides, even if everyone else does keep spamming up a storm, if your submission is correctly titled and described, submitted once to the right place, and doesn't have a lot of mirrors and deeplinks to track down, it is much more likely to get processed before the rest of the junk in the queue, so it's win-win for you.
Hope that helps,
Flicker
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* There are a >few< exceptions to the one-listing-per-site rule, which you may already know: you can also submit a site to the Regional category for its town if they have a physical storefront there. You can submit a site to an additional category in the World directory if it is genuinely bilingual or multilingual (not machine-translated, mind). If a site is informational or educational in nature and has subpages with substantive information on different topics, those subpages MAY be valuable to us. On the other hand, some kinds of sites, such as affiliate selling programs, are NEVER valuable to us. Don't spend your energy complaining about or trying to circumvent this rule while your competitors are out finding other, effective ways of promoting affiliate sites. If you have a screw to turn, don't try to steal my hammer to bang on it with; I need that for the nails, and it won't help you anyway. Go find a screwdriver! :-D
Welcome to WebmasterWorld.
Sadly, I've seen too many exceptions to the rules you describe to take you too seriously.
Fair enough!
TJ
Thanks for the insights. Helps us all understand better. Don't be a stranger..... :)
Everything's percentages in the business world, isn't it? (-: There will always be some poor submissions that get processed quickly and some good ones that sit for a long time, but your odds go up -very- much if you present things in the general way I describe. I can tell you that I personally will often flip through an unreviewed queue and review the better, easier-to-process ones--the ones that have been submitted to eight different categories, are grossly misplaced, redirect, look like mirrors or other spam, or have useless titles and descriptions that don't follow the guidelines wind up being left for another day (or month).
When you're trying to get someone else to do what you want, it *always* helps to make that task closer to what the other person wants to do anyway.
Good luck!
Flicker
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Disclaimer: This post constitutes an unofficial, personal opinion not necessarily shared by other ODP editors, the university, or my cats.
Disclaimer: This post constitutes an unofficial, personal opinion not necessarily shared by other ODP editors, the university, or my cats.
My cats however, say it's the gospel that they live by!
TJ
The ODP does seem to cause SEOs and webmasters a tremendous amount of stress. In the interest of lowering the national blood pressure level,You could also just make everything open. Everything.
We get a lot of angry email just from having our names listed on categories we work on. We don't tell, ever, who has made an edit to a site, accepted it, or rejected it, because we don't want to facilitate that. We work for free; in exchange, we deserve at least that minimal level of protection.
We also don't want to make public which spammers we are onto and why, for reasons that should be obvious.
I wouldn't personally mind making the unreviewed queue public, though I fear it would reinforce people's misperception that it's our job to process submissions. It actually isn't. It's our job to add listings, and submissions are only one possible source for such listings... in some places valuable, in others not really worth the time and effort it takes to wade through them. Perhaps if the queue were public, it would help you see that for yourself. Or perhaps it would just focus people even more on a service that we don't provide. I couldn't really say.
Flicker
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Disclaimer: This post constitutes an unofficial, personal opinion not necessarily shared by other ODP editors, the university, or my cats.
They send hate mail and viruses. They threaten. They try to bribe. They call our houses from the wrong time zone and wake our children.I know I said 'everything'. Naturally, personal information should be guarded closely by the organisation. However if an editor chooses the same handle he/she uses elsewhere and the personal information is there that would be foolish on his/her part. This would be one of the problems with implementation. The things you mentioned already occur today. Instead of looking at the bad things that could happen, look at it as a way to rework things in the face of pressures no one could have predicted.
We get a lot of angry email just from having our names listed on categories we work on.Naturally, the only email listed AND used for responses would be an ODP issued web mail account. It would have to be that way since the emails would be a matter of public record.
Perhaps if the queue were public, it would help you see that for yourself.It might also make it obvious to everyone that does not follow the advice you gave in your original post that they're wasting their lack of effort.:)
Welcome to WebmasterWorld
IMO A home run on your first at bat.
They're not going to make it a matter of public record who has made each edit. This would make it ten times easier for submitters to manipulate the system by pressuring, harassing, or bribing editors. The ODP has a vested business interest in eliminating the last one, and a strong desire to minimize the previous two. They've made the editor of each category publicly visible; there are enough problems associated with that already, and I doubt you'll ever see them go farther. I don't want the public to know which edits were made by me, because I don't want to be targeted by an angry webmaster whose affiliate site I rejected for a listing. Better he should rage against the ODP rule in general than call my house because I was the one who implemented it.
They're not going to make spam-hunting processes public because that would help spammers refine their spamming techniques.
And they're not going to make our forum and email to each other publicly accessible, because frankly, we're a bunch of volunteers, and if we couldn't even use our real names and converse about personal information amongst ourselves, there would be a lot fewer of us.
Please understand that there isn't really a 'problem' as far as our directory is concerned, so we're not likely to be interested in extreme 'solutions'. Most of us do CARE about other people's problems, and might even be moved to help in some cases, but they're still other people's problems, and you can't be expecting any business to make changes that would be expensive and hurt their workings for no gain to their business at all. Giving the public open access to all of our email boxes and forcing volunteer workers to adopt a witness-protection-level anonymity amongst themselves if they don't want to be stalked by strangers is just not going to happen. No business works that way, and there's no compelling reason for us to.
Flicker
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Disclaimer: This post constitutes an unofficial, personal opinion not necessarily shared by other ODP editors, the university, or my cats.
Your last post above confuses me a little when you say "I can't think of ANY business I've worked for that does that. Can you?"
Because I do not tend to compare the ODP with any business.
To my mind "businesses are about making profits".
That is the sole reason for existance of a business.
Usually this profit is intended to result from providing some solution to some need or serving some customer or other with something for a price that exceeds the cost of provision.
This does not come into my mind when I think of the ODP so I am surprised to see you making that comparison. Would there not be more suitable organisation types to benchmark the ODP against, perhaps in the not for profit sector?
Am I mistaken to be surprised?
Case in point...
I did considerable research into the proper category/sub category of the ODP to submit my (commercial) site to. While conducting my research, I noted several of what appeared to be "mirror"" sites (with slight alterations in graphics/text) that appeared in the category I had decided on.
Further investigation on my part (using whois info, I.P., etc.) revealed that no less than 5 sites, hosted on the same server, owned by the same person/company, selling the EXACT same inventory (albeit through 5 different sites) were all listed in the same category.
Editor laziness, oversight, or complicity?
Using the supplied abuse report form, I submitted my findings, including copies of all whois info for each domain, specific URL's to identical content, etc. The case was iron-clad, and (IMHO) irrefutable. Either the Editor was in on it, or had simply been horn-swaggled.
The result?
Zip...nothing..nada.
Using the "check status" feature, the "case" was closed several months ago, with NO CHANGE in the listings of any of the sites in question.
While I understand the end user experience is the focus that (supposedly) drives the ODP, how does one person/company holding the top 5 positions using mirrored sites in the SERPS in a single industry effectively serving those users?
Ah well...this is not the first case (and I'm sure won't be the last) of editor abuse that has gone overlooked. While I honestly believe there are honest, hardworking, and selfless volunteers working with/for the ODP, I'm afraid they have become outnumbered by those who are not.
Erik
P.S. It should be noted that I have never had a submission "turned down" with the ODP, and fully expect this latest to be accepted. Having said that, since the "playing field" is so skewed to this particular competitor who has/is being allowed to effectively spam his way to better SERPS, it will do both me, and the end user little benefit.
The staff at ODP is never going to make its internal email, abuse reports and follow-up, reasons for firing a worker, and other staff matters publicly available.You're right of course. New staff would have to be the first order of business. As an aside, if a business were run like the ODP...thats another thread I suppose.
We don't need more openness; we need more trust from the Internet community that ODP is on the job, and recognition of the awesome work that ODP editors do.The openness is what would bring the trust AND the recognition.
Well... that's not necessarily true. In real life, for example, I work for a non-profit corporation. We're still a corporation (business). We still have to be fiscally responsible, address our organization's goals, and not drive away our volunteers. It would be inconceivable that we would start publishing all our internal email and memos on the internet and publicizing the reasons why we let one of our staff go. No professional business behaves that way, regardless of whether their employees are paid or not!
>New staff would have to be the first order of business.
I realize you're frustrated Powdork, but you need to take a step back and realize the unrealistic nature of what you're asking for. You expect an organization to replace its staff, make all its company email publicly available, make onerous changes which will cause employees hardship, and spend a lot of time/money on frequent updates of additional public pages... all because you're getting submission stress? When submissions aren't even that organization's raison d'etre?
You might as well be asking McDonald's to fire all its restaurant managers, tape record and publish all board meetings, and replace all beef on their menu with pork because you are frustrated at the sluggish sales from your pig farm. It's just really NOT going to happen.
We've drifted very far from the point of my original message... I'm happy to discuss other topics with you if you like, but I think you should start a new thread if you want to go over all the Things You Think Should Change At ODP. Talking here about very far-fetched things like whether you ought to have the right to read private email between me and another editor if you feel like it is only going to continue to distract from the (imho, valuable) advice I offered earlier.
You might as well be asking McDonald's to fire all its restaurant managers, tape record and publish all board meetings, and replace all beef on their menu with pork because you are frustrated at the sluggish sales from your pig farm. It's just really NOT going to happen.McDonalds is already accountable for their actions. They do not hide behind the veil of volunteerism. They do not have the unfettered discretion as to whether or not they will tell you what's in their burgers, they have to. Again you are comparing the ODP to a business which it is not. It is an organisation, accountable to no one.
all because you're getting submission stress?
Talking here about very far-fetched things like whether you ought to have the right to read private email between me and another editor if you feel like it is only going to continue to distract from the (imho, valuable) advice I offered earlier.I should never be able to view your private email. In the scenario I have outlined you would simply need to use something other than your odp mail because you would know it is open to public scrutiny.
The ODP does seem to cause SEOs and webmasters a tremendous amount of stress. In the interest of lowering the national blood pressure level,I am merely offering some additional means to help lower the national blood pressure. The ideas are not mainstream but that doesn't mean by saying them I have an axe to grind. They are just ideas. I particularly think that if nothing else, it would help BOTH sides to have the unrevieweds listed in the category in which they are submitted. It would be an excellent example of what good submissions are, and what bad submissions are. Webmasters would understand that they would garner no search engine, mirror, or other benefits until the site was accepted. If they were on a separate page linked to from the category, it would not require the extra bandwidth each time a page is brought up. Ideas can't hurt you.
I particularly think that if nothing else, it would help BOTH sides to have the unrevieweds listed in the category in which they are submitted.
You realise you are asking for all submissions to be listed, regardless of status (by which I include spam, no content, under construction, duplicate, wrong category ...).
Taking that one small step further, you are seeking a directory which is entirely self-service, with no editorial input at all.
Very democratic, I'm sure. But, after a short while, how useful?
And how long before Google (etc.) dropped it like a hot potato?
IMO Powdork has brought up some interesting ideas, far fetched perhaps, but at least they highlight a common feeling among webmasters. For understandable reasons the ODP people have to try and eliminate pressure from webmasters. Some feel many editors have moved too far away from the web, and have burrowed into imaginary trenches. Discussions like this, or this [webmasterworld.com] open up true communication again.
Quadrille
When I introduced the idea in message 8 I stated that the links of the unreviewed listings would be unspiderable and not included in any feed or dump. GoogleBot et al need never see them.
So not such a damaging addition, but still changing ODP rather too radically for me - and, I suspect, most.
The time investment by editors would be huge - editor notes would need to be unambiguous, dispensing with jargon and 'in house' abbreviations. Editors would feel unable to give an opinion, for fear of reprisal;s and complaints; The slightest slip could lead to accustaions of bias.
Technically, there might also be problems ... how would you distinguish between 'unreviewed - pending' and 'unreviewed - suspended' (maybe for investigation, maybe due to server down). That alone raises so many complications that it would upset many (especially if their site looked suspended, while a rival's was listed).
And to what advantage? Surely all a submitter needs is an email saying (a) site is now listed in x category at this URL or (b) we regret your site has not been listed at this time, editor's decison is final. Automatically triggered by the editor's action, no extra work involved (once a few sentances of javascript have been added to the code!)
Ah, you've spotted the flaw ... what does (b) really mean ...?
However you cut it, your need for information would be demanding of ODP editors' time, and would distract them from their job - which is adding sites to the directory.
But I would support email notification of the decision, if only to encourage submitters to supply real email addresses!
The time investment by editors would be huge - editor notes would need to be unambiguous, dispensing with jargon and 'in house' abbreviations. Editors would feel unable to give an opinion, for fear of reprisal;s and complaints; The slightest slip could lead to accustaions of bias.That would be some of the problems associated with some of the changes, but not with listing unrevieweds. In fact, I think that would be save work in the long because:
I have also had my frustrations with the editors. I have found that if you have a site of your own and you also work for another company in the same field(different domains and domain owners) you cant list both sites.
I don't understand it, but that is the way it is. I actually put DMOZ last on my list of things to do now. I have not found I depend on DMOZ to get me in to Google or increase Page Rank etc.
I know a lot of people swear by it - I think it's good to get my clients listed there - I just don't feel it is the "end" if it doesn't happen.
Fewer people would submit to the more spam laden categories since they would see what they were up against, and what happens to poor submissions.
Huh?
Rather the opposite. Some would be tempted to spam every category in sight, knowing their submission would be visible for moths, in some cases (And high visibility would soon show the slow categories). ODP would find it difficult to to stop this abuse ... is it a spamming webmaster, or his rival trying to get him blacklisted.
I suspect you really haven't thought this through ... you seem to have considered your needs, but ignored the needs (and motivation) of others, possibly less scrupulous than yourself!
We know it ain't gonna happen - I think you need to recognize that transparency - in the real world - just doesn't always work.
Rather the opposite. Some would be tempted to spam every category in sight, knowing their submission would be visible for moths, in some cases (And high visibility would soon show the slow categories). ODP would find it difficult to to stop this abuse ... is it a spamming webmaster, or his rival trying to get him blacklisted.Naturally, each Domain would only be allowed one entry in any category at a time. Naturally, domains on DMOZ's list of ex-editor's sites and spammers (its just a tool) could also be excluded.
And who cares about visibility on DMOZ (certainly not the moths ;) )?
And I'm not referring to anyone who reads these messages; the folk I'm referring to wouldn't have the humility - or sense - to think they have anything to learn. I'm talking about the ones who get SEO a bad name, and who would seek to exploit any perceived loophole in ODP.
And don't forget the Butterflies ;)
