Open directory submission

Hi there, I submitted my site to the open directory in march or april this year but haven't heard anything back from them. Does anybody know it normally takes?

 

All i will say is there is not realy a range it could be one day to one year but to give you an idear there have been websites that submitted about a few years ago and still waiting

 

Check the category you submitted to. If it's been updated more than 2 months since you submitted it, then re-submit. Make sure though, that you've made some improvements and it's submitted to the right category.

 

Not all categories have editors. DMOZ is simply not used by as many people. The resulting lack of awareness has seen the community surrounding the directory decrease through attrition. This means there are fewer editors.
There also seems to be more suspicion than in the past about requests to become editors. Most people are probably more motivated by a desire to get their sites listed than to make a category more functional. This may result in fewer requests to become an editor being accepted.
There remain efforts to keep the open directory relevant, but it cannot compete as a resource with search engines, which are yielding better and better responses as they get better at delivering links to content than pages designed to attract click throughs on ads.

 

As has been said before. This is not a good advice.
A suggested site will stay in the review pool until it either is accepted or rejected. Suggesting a site again will probably do you more harm than good.

After a site is suggested and you don't see it listed there are 3 possibilties
1) no editor has looked at it - it is still waiting review - no need to suggest again - if you suggest again it will overwrite the previous suggestion - if an editor will look at the suggestions in date order you have now moved your site at the back
2) the site was rejected - no need to suggest again - suggesting a non-listable site many times can get you marked as a spammer and you and all your sites could get banned
3) an editor looked at the site an decided this isn't the right category, he moved it to another category where it is now waiting review - no need to suggest again

Conclusion: If you want to make the 'waiting' time even longer as it already is or if you want to be marked as spammer please suggest again. In all other cases remember DMOZ golden rule "suggest ONCE to the ONE best category".

 

7 months isn't that long in "DMOZ years". A category I took over had sites that hadn't been reviewed in over 3 years. As a former (and current) critic of DMOZ, I can now say with experience that it takes quite a bit of time to review each submission and that you can have 50 submissions waiting for every site listed in a category. If there is more than one category that is applicable for your site, I would always submit (if possible) to a category that has an editor listed at the bottom of a category.

I would NOT suggest submitting to the same category after only 7 months. If your site has been rejected (which you have no way of knowing unless an editor happened to notify you) your domain has a notation on it as to the reason why. You submission date will also be revised to the new date, so if an editor sorts by date, yours will go to the bottom of the list and could take even longer to be reviewed.

If your site has affiliate product links, or even adsense, it will probably be rejected by a majority of editors as this seems to be the suggested course to take under current editor guidelines. Of course there are sites that have been accepted as the guidelines aren't black and white, and certainly editors that favor their own sites. Out of 100 submissions, I found only 5 that would meet a strict interpretation for acceptance, so a lot rides on the editor that reviews your site. Make sure ALL your links work and that your site provides original content. Try to objectively compare your site to the best sites in the category you have submitted to, not the worst ones accepted.

While I have several sites that are listed, I have submissions that have been waiting longer than yours and even as an editor, I have no way of knowing if they have been reviewed or rejected.

I would suggest just waiting. There simply aren't enough editors to deal with the volume of submissions in a timely manner. A DMOZ listing is worth the time it takes to submit, but isn't going to make or break any site. There is a slight benefit to SERPS, but a few quality, relevant backlinks will give you more benefit.

I wish DMOZ would go to a paid submission to help cut down on the trash that is submitted for listing and allow for a faster approval for quality sites. A lot of people submit a site a dozen or more times - and while this can cause a site to be blacklisted, it still takes up time.

I would like to see something like a $25 fee per submission for review (no guarantee of acceptance). The staff would still be all volunteer, and 100% of the fees collected would go to a charity like the Red Cross. Perhaps there could even be a listing of a dozen of so charities where you get to choose and then submit payment directly to them and get some sort of code to put on the site submission form. If DMOZ never touches the money, it would prevent any problems that might arise from going to a fee based submission. Something needs to be done to cut down on the volume of subpar submissions or the wait time is even going to get worse as even more editors resign out of frustration. Personally, I would be more inclined to commit additional time if I knew it was benefitting a charity.

 

Since ODP would have no value at all without Google, they might just decide to PR 0 DMOZ some time in the future if this becomes too big of a problem. They can always use the Yahoo directory or start one of their own for personally reviewed status. It's pretty arrogant to bite the hand that feeds you.

 

I agree with you 100%. As more outlets become available for people to vent their frustration with DMOZ, Google will soon be left with no choice but to deal with the situation. After all the links are devalued by Google from DMOZ it will be very interesting to see how many of those VOLUNTEERS stay with ODP.

A good example which I have seen a few post on was Matt Cutts blog asking him if google had any intentions of dealing with the corruption / submission time frame issues within DMOZ. As more of these outlets are made public knowledge, Google / ODP will have to deal with this. ( Can All That Are Frustrated Say Spam Matt Cutts Blog )

With Google losing AOL to MSN, Google can not as a company deal with to many more negative issues as it relates to consumer confidence. LOL speaking of which I wonder if a press release would be a nice tool to use. If this hasnt been done, build a site, do a press release that drives traffic to the site, blog it, post the domain on every forum, fill it full of the comments / post from the many forums ( with their premission of course ) and have visitors digital sign a petition to forward to Google and Netscape. If a website is built I would personally pay the $500 - $700 to prweb to make sure it gets top placement to run the release after clearing it with my attorney.

When thousands of people speak with one voice in the world of business you get heard, when we speak as just individuals we generally get ignored.

 

Would you please report these editors in the DMOZ internal fora. If there are editors who reject sites based only on the fact that the site has affiliate links or adsense they ar not interpreting the guidelines correctly.

As an editor you should know that this will never happen. DMOZ will always be free. Free to be listed in, free to suggest a site to and free to use our data.

 

I'm glad to hear that these are not the official guidelines because if they were it would be a slap in the face to Google by excluding sites just because they run adsense. Google wants small content based sites in the adsense program. At every turn they are looking for new people to sign up. Google has always said that adding the adsense code to pages would not help or hurt a webmasters position with their search engine. However, since Google puts weight on DMOZ listings and if some editors are discriminating against sites that have adsense on them, then webmasters are getting hurt in Google rankings because they have added adsense to their pages.

I must say that I have problems with this statement as well. How could any major search engine put much weight into a directory system that is this far behind? Heck, my computer is obsolete six months after I buy it. How can a directory that runs three years behind help a company that's spending billions of dollars trying to have a fresh search index? If this statement is true, it's just another reason why Google might want to look at alternative human edited directories. Even with the so called Google "sandbox" it doesn't take three years to get out of it.

 

You either aren't an editor, or didn't even read the guidlines.

Under sites not to include:

"Revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online
publishers/salespeople, whereby compensation is based on
performance measures, typically in the form of sales of products and services,
clicks, registrations, or some other hybrid model. There are four
basic types of affiliate sites: Affiliate Links, Sites Consisting
Mostly of Affiliate Links, Affiliate Reseller Sites (aka Fraternal
Mirrors), and Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) Independent
Representative
sites.

Why Doesn't the ODP List These Sites?

It's not the business model we don't like. It's the mirrored and
duplicated content. For example, suppose you have a company
offering
data storage products and services. They have exclusive resellers
who
provide a front for selling their products and services. While the
reseller sites may be designed and written differently, their
content and aim are exactly the same. Adding sites with the same
content or that point to the same place are not unique or useful."


Later it states "Sites consisting primarily of affiliate links"

Either way, it is clear that a site can be rejected solely based on affiliate links.

As far as DMOZ always being free, only time will tell. Neither you or I can make that call.

What started out as a great idea, no longer works. I have about 10 sites listed in DMOZ (all pre-adsense craze) and based on the traffic from logs, very few people use the directory. The only reason to have a DMOZ listed site is the slight benefit Google gives a listing. Recently Google has devalued the importance of a DMOZ listing and no longer counts links from the DMOZ clones (or severly limits their value). Even if you believe DMOZ is the greatest directory of all-time, if no one uses it, it doesn't serve any purpose. Should google ever drop the DMOZ feed.....

A directory that has declining editors and a review wait time that can exceed 3 years is not a sign of a healthy operation. A directory that is "free" doesn't mean free of corruption and doesn't mean better.

 

I believe you wrote those words from your heart and I believe the good editors that visit here on a regular basis also believe in what they are doing. However, something just doesn't feel right about this directory anymore and it's not just disgruntled webmasters that feel this way. I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for saying this, but I believe the problem isn't the folks that do their darn well best to follow the rules, but the couple of people at the top that keep writing rules that no one can understand or follow. I don't think this problem is a grass roots problem at all. It's a problem because a few elites at the top that have some kind of power complex. That attitude does filter down to a few of the editors, but most folks that volunteer are trying to do the right thing and many times they are overruled in their judgements because the rules are not understandable to the average person.

 

It's a well known fact that sites sit unreviewed for over 3 years. I just recently went though unreviewed sites from 2003. The problem is that it takes a LONG time to properly review a site for inclusion. You need to check all the links, you need to check if the site is a mirror, you need to check for original content and if the site is already listed in another category. You then need to make sure it is in the best category and then write a descripton. If it wasn't submitted to the right category, you aren't supposed to delete it, but rather find the right category and pass it along to the editor of that category. Nothing about it is hard, it just takes time to do it for a hundred, or hundreds of submissions.

Take a look at the categories. Notice how many categories don't have an editor listed at the bottom. The problem is that not enough people want to donate the time it takes. DMOZ lists the number of editors since inception- not the number of active editors. The vast majority of editors listed in the total number are no longer active.

 

Now that statement is wrong. I know many people that have volunteered and been turned down because they have had retail web sites before, sometimes years before they applied. In my opinion, ODP only wants people that have been involved in some kind of free site operation or no operation at all. Just because people have been involved with commercial operations in the past doesn't mean they can't follow rules. Maybe I've just lived in Texas too long, but this seems like a classic case of liberal bias where anything commercial is bad, but there is a problem with this theory. The ODP main customer, Google, may have liberal beliefs, but if these folks don't think Google is in business to make a profit, they are kidding themselves.

The reason I feel this way is because in the past when I submitted commercial web sites that were never approved and I click the button for a higher up to visit the site for further review, I noticed that those reviews always came from eastern Ivy League Schools like Boston College or Princeton University. Why does ODP only use intellectual elites in their final approval process? Also, why do they most likely have these same people, that are anti capitalism, write the rules for editors? There is a story behind the story here and anyone that wants to check this out, just follow my example and see what happens. I'm not against liberals, but these schools have been known for their anti capitalism positions in the past and that's why it doesn't surprise me that some editors are pointed in the direction of non commercial sites.

 

Nice tip. This is the best way to find out that they have rejected our submission or it is still in que.

If it is still in que then we should not submit it again.

 

Its a bad tip and if your site is still in the "que" it will only mean it will take longer to get reviewed (the new submission will over write the old one with the new date)

 

You are misinterpreting what is being put forth in those guidelines you're quoting.

A site stands or falls on the "unique content" it provides. A site is rejected for lack of unique content regardless of affiliate links. If a site is providing content that adds value to the category and it has adsense it will be listed. If the affiliate links are the content, the site will be rejected.

 

Why don't you read whole post properly before making any comments. I said in next line that you should not resubmit it.

 

What is the web site address you are using to suggest your sites? I've never seen anything like this.

 

I'm usually the first one to say companies should donate more to charity, but Dmoz is not exactly flush with cash. Their servers are sometimes overloaded and you can't do a search. They desperately need more money and so giving 100% of the fees to the Red Cross might not be the best course of action. If they kept money from submissions (and inconspicious advertising) they could have more and better servers and pay people to ensure the directory is properly managed.