Forum Moderators: skibum
I'm just having problems getting anything into the DMOZ - I'm sure it's something to do with the flaming I did on the message board a while back.
The last response I got was along the lines of "you have already submitted 2 sites into this category that have been rejected - don't you get the message". The fact is there were 2 sites and the third was a completely different site which is the only independent news source in my region.
I'm sure it's personal!
Category editors go out across the web looking for relevant, high-quality and useful, original sites for their category. When they find them, they include them in their category.
That's it.
Oh... and there's a submission button as well for people who want to promote their own sites, but that's mostly considered a waste of time spam-bucket and is ignored.
I conclude that the best way to get included in dmoz is to write a high-quality, useful site with minimal advertising and never ever submit it.
I have no idea whether this will work.
My reasons for thinking this are a particular webmaster I know whose hotel affiliate site does remarkably well for a PR4 site with no linking policy.
He puts it down to SEO techniques but I think most of us realise that isn't enough these days.
The site used to be a town guide/directory but now it is an all Europe hotel aff site.
2 factors: old site (1998?) and DMOZ listing.
I wouldn't care so much about the DMOZ except I still think it gets a disproportianate weighting from Google.
You can outrank people who are in DMOZ, I do.
Anyway I did on occaision go and see what new sites google listed for my categroy, but mostly it was a weekly troll through all of the sites that had been submitted to my category by users.
99% of submissions were spam and crap that people were trying to get multiple listings in different categories. Lots of people with content light pages designed to just get into every category - deep linking etc. So keeping the category only containing useful information was my main task.
I have the impression that dmoz isn't that important anymore, given how often google takes a snapshot of the directory. I don't have any real information about its importance, but would just imagine that google is pretty sophisticated and would only use it to seed their own db.
Additionally, the sites and information within DMOZ make sites coming out of Google's Sandbox look like breaking news.
If you are in, great. If not, it's gonna be months if indeed ever until you get in. I think it helps rankings in Google, in the sense that it's better to be in than not, but otherwise, submit and forget.
Oh yeah, don't make the mistake of asking why you aren't allowed in, unless you want some ranting diatribe from an overworked editor. The consensus seems to be that they have to wade through about 100 crappy submissions for every 1 good one, so I agree that you just have to build a nice site and let them find it.
Shame, because it helps in Google, though no, it is certainly not the be all and end all of things you can do to get more traffic.
But I've certainly seen a ton of junk aff-based sites with 1 page of content in there too. DMOZ is silly.
The process of submitting a "content" site and then turning it into an "affiliate" site is known as bait and switch. It may seem like a good idea, but that's a good way of getting every single site you own permanently barred from the ODP forever.
The best thing to do with your affiliate site is to ignore the ODP and promote it in other ways. You'll just waste valuable time and effort otherwise.
dmoz is too inconsistent to be reliable for google. I'm sure they trust their own algorithm more.
just wild speculation, but I would think google has moved on, ages ago, from dmoz.
Back then, I tried to be an editor for a while many years ago in another category and my good content hobbyist sites were constantly being dropped by a another editor and replaced with junky affiliate sites of his own.
The process of submitting a "content" site and then turning it into an "affiliate" site is known as bait and switch. It may seem like a good idea, but that's a good way of getting every single site you own permanently barred from the ODP forever.
How do they determine whether you are the site owners or not? And for small website developer like me, i only own one or two websites, how can they banned all my websites since i only own or or two websites. So i guess this is a good idea of submitting to dmoz. Real content first, then all affiliate links. Although this is cheating, but all those bastards out there have their crappy affiliate sites in the listing. Serious, all of them are affiliate links. None is real content. And i have been noticing that they stay there for like one or more year.
i admit that i cannot support my website without affiliate listings but they are too much. 100% affiliate links. Maybe i should just modify my websites to all affiliate listings to make the internet worst.
How do they determine whether you are the site owners or not? And for small website developer like me, i only own one or two websites, how can they banned all my websites since i only own or or two websites.
There are various tools and techniques that editors can use to determine things like this. They're the sort of things that you'd only know about if you did investigative work into site owerships and relationships. And I ain't saying what they are.
If you see out-and-out affiliate sites with no content, then you can always report that as abuse. Of course, the amount of affiliate links varies on every site, but each site must have some unique content, and that content should not exist primarily to drive traffic to the affiliate links.
Basically, if you're supporting a content site with affiliate links then that is typically acceptable. If you're just using the content as sales spin to drive traffic, then generally it won't be. Of course, sites are considered on a site-by-site basis. However, the most profitable affiliate sites tend to be straight sales sites, and not eligible for a listing.
