"up to a few weeks or more" I think is the official statement. However there is no average time... some sites make it in on the same day, others never make it in. The best advice anyone can really give is to "submit & forget" as it only takes a few moments to submit your site. After that, waiting is just wasting time...
Assuming for the moment that the website is listable, anywhere from the time it takes to pass through the spam filters (about 24 hours) to several years. We just can't answer the question more accurately because we don't know.
As jimnoble said. I admit I am new to this forum, so forgive my naivete (and my inability to find the proper keystrokes for accents ), but I'm surprised to see that people still seem to believe that the ODP relies on webmaster suggestions for its listings. To shamelessly quote myself from another thread here:
There are posts on digital point claiming the same day. Some of these claims made by editors. There is even one post by an editor here claiming to have made a listing within minutes. While I know that the backend has changed it it takes a while to make it though the the system, such things have happened...so statistically make it into the calculation. So thanks for making a second post just say I could be wrong. It really means a lot knowing you care so much Especially when you use "probably" which leaves "possibly" still open meaning you actually agree with me, it's just that one of us sees the class half full, the other half empty.
That's the difference between your goals and our goals. Your goal is to get listed, our goal is to build good categories of relative sites that we feel will be a good resource for web surfers looking for specific information about either a Topic or a Geographical area. (not the web user, which could be search engines, web masters, other directories, or site owners) There is a big difference between a web user and a web surfer, they are not the same. One we serve, the other is irrelevant to our task. That may sound cocky, but it isn't, it's just a fact. A directory collects and organizes web sites into categories, and provides links to other categories that may be of interest to that information seeker. While building these categories, editors follow a certain criteria that the Directory has for inclusion, and they use their best human judgement in selecting sites that will make the category of value. Not to the website owners, builders, or the search engines who deliver the information, but, to the final information seeker (the web surfer). Our eyes are only on the web surfer/information seeker and what will be of value to them. In doing this task, the Directory invites the participation of the public by allowing you to make site "suggestions" to us. Many of those suggestions are sites we can use, and many of them are not. There's no guarantee or promise that they will be, and absolutely no right to be listed, no matter how personally important it may be to you. Our task isn't to list every site available as quickly as possible, our task is to build good categories. A site may be perfectly wonderful, but if we already have a perfectly wonderful site with the same information on it, why would we need two of them? In our view, the web surfer whom we serve, only needs to see the information once, not ten or twenty times, so we look for those sites that have a little something more, "unique content" , something different that the other sites in the category don't have, something that will make the category itself more useful to the seeker of information/web surfer. That is the difference between your goal and ours, and as disappointing as it might be to not be included, it isn't meant as a slap in the face to you, but a neccessary criteria for the benefit of the information seeker. The reason I keep saying that the wants and desires of web masters and site owners is irrelevant is because it has nothing to do with building good categories for the information seekers, not because you are unimportant or unappreciated. The truth is, a web surfer only needs to see the information once, not different flavors of the same information, because saving time is important to all of us, and getting to the information quickly is why we use the Internet. This is all my personal opinion as an editor of 6 years.
I do like this post very much, it 's very clear to me to understand more on DMOZ's editor work very very hard than I ever though. Thanks crowba.
Unfortunately once sites are listed they aren't checked which makes for a bad directory. In my niche of the web there are probably 20 websites and blogs listed the newest of which was updated the last time about 7 years ago. They all have inaccurate information and what is accurate is out of date. There isn't a difference between a web surfer and a web user thats ridiculous both are the same they are searching the internet for relevant information and Dmoz falls short in many cases to provide relevant information.
A lot of the problems that people bring up in the forums (here, and elsewhere) are predominately problems with the editors of DMOZ. You'll find that other categories are maintained properly and the way that they're supposed to be (usually smaller ones, like the one I edit) whereas the larger ones it's near impossible to keep track of: manual editing of new submissions, moved submissions + already existing websites would take a very, very long time on some of the less specific categories. I feel sorry for those editors.
Fortunately, this is not the case. There are several sorts of automated QC tools which continuously scan the directory for dead links etc, but with millions of listings this takes some time. Also, no tool is perfect, which is why human editors and non-editors are always encouraged to report any such problems they find. There are many ways to do this, including the Update URL feature on every category page, or posting in the QC thread at Resource-Zone. So if you do see dead or hijacked sites, or some other similarly serious problem, please report it so it can be attended to. Thank you for your help!
Besides what my friend, makrhod said, we do have a manpower problem if you consider that there are roughly 6,000 editors, roughly 600,000 categories, and roughly 4 to 5 million sites. Also, because we are volunteers doing this as a hobby and not a job, we have various amounts of free time to devote to it, and every editor (depending on how much knowledge, experience, and desire they have) has varying amounts of access to edit in. Some only edit in one small category and others edit thousands of categories. Search engines are web users - we don't serve them Webmasters are web users - we don't serve them SEOs are web users - we don't serve them Site owners are web users - we don't serve them Web surfers, looking for specific information about a Topic or Geographic area, are web users - we do serve them The main goal of Editors is to build categories for those seekers of information, not for search engines, not for web masters/SEOs, and not for site owners. You view us as site processors serving your needs, we are not. We build categories for the use of the web surfer/information seeker. If I'm looking for information about Water Gardening, because I have one (which I do) or I'm going to build one, I don't want to see every site in existance about the Topic, I want to see the sites that give me the information I'm looking for, and give it to me quickly. If there are 100 sites, and 50 of them have the exact same information on them, why would I want to waste my time looking at those 50 when one of them will do just fine. Because they have different owners? How does that save me time? It doesn't, it's annoying. I want to see that one site and the other 50 that have something a little different to offer, unique content that no other site has. The editors job is to list those 51 sites that make that category useful to the information seeker/web surfer. See the difference? It has nothing to do with search engines, webmasters, or site owners. Though they may be users of the Internet and downstream users of our data, they are not whom we serve in building the Directory. It has everything to do with the web surfer who will be the end user of the information. To further help the web surfer, the editor will give it the correct title and describe to the surfer what the site is and what kind of information they might find on the site. The web surfer can then make the decision to either visit the site or not, saving them even more time. The question an editor needs to ask is not, does this site owner deserve to be listed or does it have a great design, but does the information on the site help make the category a useful resource for the information seeker? We don't process sites, we build categories.
What good is that information though when it is out of date or irrelevant to the search? Quite the contrary...I view DMOZ as an inferior search engine in all regards that doesn't merit anyone seeking inclusion and it shouldn't carry the weight it is given. I just did a search on dmoz for water gardening and the results returned were much the same as all results returned in dmoz. Out of the first 5 sites only 3 were really relevant and of those one was linked to content back in 2004 another only had 3 small articles about water gardening and yet another really had nothing to do with water gardening but conserving water while gardening. The same search on google returned extremely relevant sites in the top 5 slots that would easily give better and more info than the dmoz engine delivered. The question isn't one of 50 sites having the exact same info on them but of getting 50 sites that have relevant information to your search....DMOZ failes at this regularly because it usually delivers poor results which aren't unique So how is the site that related to water conservation while gardening useful to you as someone searching for water gardening? Sorry but thats ridiculous as 99% of web surfers have no idea what DMOZ is or the fact that it exists at all. dmoz exists to be a relic of the old age trying to preserve a way of doing things that is outdated while maintaining that it holds the highest of standards and yet those standards are rarely met Seems a lot of the dmoz editors have forgotten the question...
Then you would be incorrect, it isn't a search engine, it's a Directory. Google is a search engine, but it isn't a Directory. A Directory collects and organizes, nothing more. A search engine delivers the data and ranks it. The ODP search engine is a category search within the Directory.
I couldn't read this whole thing it's too long, jeesh. But you are right mostly, I am editing 4 categories and I never add ANY sites, some editors have different goals than others. And no one is giving dmoz and special "weight" as far as SEO goes.
I said "special weight". Almost every link will benefit your site - but a link in dmoz does not carry any special weight.