Hello all, just want to bounce a problem off you all and hope you can help me. I have been trying to get into DMOZ now for close to four years and still nothing. It has me a bit frustraded because I have decent rankings on both yahoo, google, and msn, my site is above average and I offer a product that is far superior to my competition. Yet for some reason or another I cannot get listed in DMOZ. I manufacture and sell custom fortune cookies over the internet, so I found an actual fortune cookies category under the "baked good" section. In that fortune cookes section I notice that all of my major competition is listed, some who are out of business or offer a junk product. Frustrated, I was able contact the editor of the baked good section and he was able to help me find who the editor was, the only problem is that is said that person was waaaaaaay to busy and didn't have time. I also noticed that my "fortune cookie" category is in need of a editor, so I assume the person assigned to it right now is also assigned to more larger categories. My question is this. What should I do from here? Do I keep submitting my site? If so how often? Can anyone help me, please!!!!! My url is www.tankinz.com. Thanks all!!!
Boiler plate coming up You might have misunderstood our objectives and how we operate here. ODP is a volunteer organisation building a directory as a hobby. Editors edit where they wish, when they wish and as much as they wish within the constraints of their permissions. We have no schedules or systems to force people to do work that they don't volunteer to do. ODP is not primarily a free listing service for website owners and it does not attempt to process their listing suggestions within the time scales desired by them. Some volunteer will process your listing suggestion in time but we can't predict who or when that might be. Elapsed times can range from a few days to a few years. There is no need to re-suggest your website and doing so could be counter-productive because a later suggestion overwrites any earlier one.
First of all thank you for taking the time to respond to my post. It is nice to have an honest and to the point answer. My only concern is that the web and e-commerce on the web is becoming more and more niche by the moment. I feel that DMOZ has a responsibitlity to offer it's visitors the best possible product it can. I am sure there are tons of other niche e-commerce small biz's out there who feel the same frustration I do. For a certain category to not be updated and even consider sites for close to four years is not correct. I understand that the editor of this category is busy, but four years? If you have anyway of looking into this I would much appreciate it. I really appreciated your comment on not adding a site too often, because it cancels out the previous suggestion. What would you suggest I do? Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Rufman the fortune cookie guy
As far as DMOZ is concerned, you need do nothing more. If your website is going to be listed, it'll happen when it happens. Over 200 editors can work in that category should they so choose and one of them will stop by eventually. In other respects, get on with your life (and perhaps find additional means of promoting your website).
Sounds like a broken system to me. I would stop wasting your life on DOMz when you probably would have better changes elsewhere. Just keep doing your promotions, and sweep domz under the rug...its not worth the time or effort of waiting when you could be doing much more elsewhere. like the dude says, if it happens then it will or wont..it surely is not worth losing any sleep. honestly, if it has been 4 years, then chances are, you will never get in, and honestly, if you did happen to get 1 listing, will it really make a difference? or maybe you are hoping it will just by being there....you are giving much ratings when I do not see they deserve anything if it has been that long.
I really do appreciate all the help on this. Does having a listing in DMOZ help with your Google ranking at all. It's just kind of weird that all of my biggest competitors who have high google rankings are also listed in DMOZ. Is this just by chance or does google really pull from DMOZ?
So google and dmoz are not directly connected, right? I mean you can have a excellent ranking in google and not even be listed on DMOZ, is this correct?
If you have good rank in Google,Yahoo and Msn than i think listing in DMOZ does not matter.I if you have submitted your link in DMOZ and it is not listed yet than try to do your website more popular with the help of directory submission,link building, forum submission and article submission
many small sites along with google use the database of Dmoz ODP...thus Dmoz listing will coz u found at may places on web additionally u'll get 2 high PR trusted back links (google directory & Dmoz itself)...thats it! so its not a rocket science to know that there r so many other ways to fulfill the above mentioned aims..without fruitlessly trying for Dmoz listings very true!
When growing a sparse category, editors often use search engines to find candidate websites. It's not surprising then that lots of higher ranked SE listings end up being listed in ODP as well Chicken <---> egg
I sympathise with you rufman... i have just started a website one month ago and am listing reasonably well with google and yahoo and count myself fortunate. I applied for a listing with DMOZ and hope that i get listed at least within four years... but if not I am hearing the chit chat in here and realise that there are other ways to improve your search engine rankings. Surely, one directory listing cannot be the be all/end all. However, I hear your point also. Four freakin years waiting for a listing on directory that carries some punch for rankings. How is it possible that this directory can carry alot of weight when it is not run efficiently. Someone has to raise this question as one opinion can snowball into a situation where the majority agree and then DMOZ, Google and yahoo can seriously look into the situation. Rufman, keep raising the questions using your situation as the example but dont be too hell bent on getting results
Because it's free ? Always a good motive for using something. .. not that I do think it does carry a lot of weight (and Google says it doesn't). You might have misunderstood our objectives and how we operate here. ODP is a volunteer organisation building a directory as a hobby. Editors edit where they wish, when they wish and as much as they wish within the constraints of their permissions. We have no schedules or systems to force people to do work that they don't volunteer to do. ODP is not primarily a free listing service for website owners and it does not attempt to process their listing suggestions within the time scales desired by them. If you think there's a problem that needs to be fixed, come along and join the volunteers.
Jim, I love the fact that you are a regular on this forum because it really helps alot of us out with our frustration with DMOZ. I actually applied to become an editor but was rejected within 5 minutes of submitting my info. Is this normal?