I have several sites listed in DMOZ open directory project, they have been listed for months possible year, before I started working on them. How come I don't see these as backlinks when I check yahoo or google inlinks?
This is the most likely, try bookmarking the dmoz page to dofollow sites like digg so that the search engines find it.
They might appear as backlinks but since yahoo siteexploer only shows 1000, it probally isnt in the first 1000, same with Google Webmastertools.
Dmoz isn't worth thinking about, even the editors are admitting selling links - searchengineoptimisation.org/dmoz-time-to-kill-it-off/