dmoz directory -- waiting for link to be added

Submitted a link over a month ago to no avail

[madeonmoon]

Hello All,

I added my site to DMOZ and I believe I chose the most appropriate category for it. This took place over a month ago but it has not shown up in the directory.

Any idea how long it usually takes and what could speed up the processing?

Thanks!
James

[madeonmoon]

Addition to my orig. post:

Not sure if this matters but my site's been up for almost a year and is "findable by all major search engines including google, yahoo, msn...

[victor]

Speeding up processing:

1. Make sure you submitted to the best category. It may get bounced around for a while if it starts from somewhere inappropriate.

2. Make sure you have written a guidelines-compliant description. Some editors are more likely to start with the "easy" sites in theie pool of suggestions.

[bether2]

It usually takes quite a bit longer than a month to get listed in ODP - with rare exceptions.

For some people, it has taken over a year. It depends on many factors - incuding how busy the editor is for that category, whether there is an editor actively working in that category, and the reasons mentioned in the previous post.

Note that an editor may be working in that category, even though their name is not listed at the bottom of the category.

Beth

[coconutz]

There is an ODP Public Forum where you can inquire about the status of your submission. Can't hurt to inquire and see if your site is in the unreviewed queue.

Keep in mind that if you resubmit it will overwrite the previous submission and there's a chance that the editor might sort the unreviewed sites by date when editing.

Once you've submitted your suggestion, there is nothing more for you to do. Inquiring in the public forum or sending an editor feedback will not expedite the review process.

Your best chance of expediting the process was as victor mentioned. Submitting to the most appropriate category using a guidelines compliant title and description.

[2oddSox]

Patience is the key. The running average I have now for sites getting listed is about 5 months. As the others have suggested, making sure you have the right category certainly helps, but generally I just submit and forget about it - there's plenty of other things to be doing in the meantime, and they all seem to get listed in the end (so far at least).

2odd...

[madeonmoon]

Thanks to All for your responses. Very helpful!

Best,
James

[hutcheson]

>The running average I have now for sites getting listed is about 5 months.

That's about the estimate I'd have given from the inside.

Note that many sites get reviewed within a few minutes, and many others are still waiting after well more than a year. The average is a completely useless guide to the expected time for any particular site.

Oh, and about half the site submittals are NEVER going to be listed, so if you're including the affiliate spam, the doorway pages that their webmasters deny are affiliate spam, the hotel reservation sites that are shrouded affiliate spam, etc., etc., etc., the average time for listing is approximately infinity divided by two, but there's a strongly bimodal distribution.

[idoc]

If you have a question about how the editors and metas treat your submissions...go to resource zone and read their comments to the folks who just want to see why their site isn't listed. They are openly crass to users of the forum and openly berate sites that have flash and even the IE browser. I don't know who is in charge there...whoever it is should read the forum.

[flicker]

Sites which are *only* in Flash or work *only* for Internet Explorer will take longer to be reviewed, that's true. Not all editors use Flash or IE, so you may have to wait for a second or even third editor to look at your site before it can be reviewed, and that can obviously delay your listing tremendously. We're not trying to be snarky--it's a legitimate tip.

There are a handful of Flash-only sites that have been sitting in the unreviewed queue of categories I edit for six months, untouched. I don't have Flash on my computer, and since I otherwise maintain those categories well and swiftly, it could be another six months before any other editor checks on those unreviewed sites.

It's a good idea to have some regular HTML pages on your site, and to ensure that it works in different browsers, if you want the fastest possible review. (It could bring you more traffic while you're about it, too!)

[Yidaki]

Patience is the key. It really varies how long it takes. I had a new site added after two days. Another site is still waiting for inclusion since two (2) years in an obviously dead category. Best is to submit and forget. There are many more places to get your site listed.

[madeonmoon]

well, my site is xhtml only (no Flash) and i developed it in Moz testing on IE occasionally. So this won't be the reason for any delay. Don't want to start a war here but if I was an editor of Open Directory Project, I *would* delay reviewing sites that are not "Openly Accessible".

The meta description I picked might be a slight problem, I am afraid but oh well -- I'll wait.. As was said here before, there are other things to do in the meantime :-)

James

[Ozzy]

How long it can take to get listed does have many factors. I tend to be on top of most of my queue, but a couple of categories are rediculous. One category generally gets approvals within a week or two (or rejected as a few sites do), and the worst constantly seems to have a backlog of around 600 sites to review, so those sites can take many months before being considered.

Bear in mind that DMOZ editors are volunteers who do this in their spare time, so compared to other things that may be going on in their lives approving sites to add to the directory may not always be high up the list.

I'm sure this does not concern your site, but the most annoying things I come across are;
- Mirror sites that try to pretend not to be.
- Blatant spam sites
- Sites submitted with "waffle" title and description

Its also worth noting that SEO'd titles and descriptions tend to get very severally trimmed or sometimes the site rejected entirely as I was read on another editors comments..
"Reason for change: search engine optimisation"
"Editor comment: Err, no thank you (deleted)"

The purpose behind DMOZ is to build a resource of information and nothing to do with search engine promotion, so although listing in DMOZ can help things such as PR you stand a much better chance of getting your site approved and listed by giving a title that is your company name followed by a short concise description of around 2-3 sentences that describe your service and nothing more.

(insert disclaimer: this is my personnal comments, etc etc etc :))

- Ozzy

[podman]

Another problem seems to be that many submitters can not be bothered to take any amount of care in the submission of their site. I get sites with the wrong URL, company names that are incorrectly spelled, sites submitted to categories which clearly state, do not submit to this category unless... submit to one of the subcategories. Yet no one seems to read this.

So there ends up a pile of "bad" sites, which will eventually be reviewed. But if I have several hundred sites to deal with, guess which one gets done first. So I have sites in subcategories that have been added within hours of being submitted and sites in the main category that have been waiting for months [and even years], and I finally got to work on this week.

Then it turns out some of those were submitted to the totally wrong category, so now they have been sitting for months and get sent somewhere else to wait again.

And as for Flash, I review them and add them, but too many are very slow to load [probably on cheap servers], and I'd rather spend the time reviewing several other sites in the same time it takes. If they are fast loading they get added quickly. Last week I had a great Flash site, that was fun to look at, and got added right away.

I have one that's been sitting for months and is so slow that I won't look at it again until I have no other ODP sites to work on.

And who gets the blame - the DMOZ editors.

[dwilson]

I've been going into a couple of the categories that needs help lately. I was surprised to find how many of the sites waiting to be listed either did not belong in the directory at all or belonged elsewhere in the directory. I end up deleting about 1/3 of them b/c they're duplicates, have no original content, or don't even exist. I've moved about 1/3 to other categories for other editors to review. And I get to list about 1/3. As others have said, the number of bad URL's and obvious misspellings also slows down the process.

Humans do it better -- but not faster!