Dmoz Lottery

Does Dmoz ban a certain IP from which it receives regular submissions. I am very surprised that during the last 6 months whatever site i have submiited none of them got added and whats more strange is that the sites which got added in that category where i submitted are much worse site than mine ones. Really Dmoz is like a Lottery.

 

There are many ways that the ODP tries to protect itself from malicious submitters. However, it is highly unlikely that one or two submissions would cause any of that to trigger.

Submissions take anywhere from 2 minutes to well over 2 years to get reviewed, depending on which part of the directory the site belongs (note I said "belongs", not "is submitted to")

As for the lottery, from the perspective of a web professional, I think that is a good analogy. Lotteries say "look how many prizes we give out - we make people rich!" while the poor person who buys a ticket every week and never wins says "what good is it, anyway? I never win" - but they still buy tickets.
And yes, luck probably plays a factor as to when the site will be reviewed. Unlike the lottery, though, while you have no control over the process, you can increase your odds of being successful.

Standard ODP policy: Submit once to what you feel is the best category for the site. Do not submit multiple pages per business. If you do not see it listed after about six months, submit once more (just to make sure that the submission got through). Read the submission guidelines about how to form a good submission - editors' eyes are caught by those that actually avoid hype and keywords in both the title and the description.

And now I turn this thread over to the usual cast of ODP-cynics

 

Lottery, yeah exactly!.

I have 10 sites. The two absolute worst ones got listed. And really unfortunately they are hosted on a freehosting subdomain and I cannot even put a 301 on it. The second one of these I didn't even submit as it was so unimportant, and it got listed. While my business site has not been listed ...

That is lottery.

 

Yeh thats what i am trying to say as well. Forget of the guidelines there are many worse sites listed in dmoz and everybody knows why, but there should be some policy in monitoring editors or google should look into it and try to find out a solution in some manner.

 

Yes, I can only think of two options:

1. DMOZ being taken over (bought), all backlog handled forcefully and 20% junk deleted. Then set up as pay-for-inclusion or only real quality sites included. Paid editors.
2. Google sets up it's own directory and DMOZ is all useless and forgotten in about a year later.

Which one do you think will happen?

 

Good suggestion friend, i think 2nd one is a good and more appropriate solutions and if that happens it will end frustration of not getting into dmoz and blaming that dmoz editors are corrupt. If dmoz become paid than its value will be lost and SEO will become too much costly because if dmoz do this everybody will follow, already its getting very difficult to find good free directories to submit to where a sites actually gets added.

Google must either completly take over dmoz and make a appropriate plan for submission review or it must stop giving excessive value to dmoz.

 

Why do you think they must do that?

 

I have 15 sites and the 3 worst ones got listed. That is why I give DMOZ no value for the most part.

 

I have 5 out of my 15 sites listed. Also about 25% of my clients are listed. I can honestly say that the quality of a category does depend on the editor for the most part. It is very hard to generalize things, because I have seen some really good editing jobs with categories that were so much more useful than the regular search engine results. When you say that the worst ones got listed, I have seen indications before that some editors prefer listing bad sites, especially when they are your competition and rather list some sites that don't threaten them as much.

 

I think it is very possible this could be the case. That is the problem with DMOZ, money is involved and where money is involved so shall be corruption.

 

Actually for the categories they are good, but for me they are useless.

 

Exactly, the overall difference between categories with commercial value and those without or only little commercial value is very high.

 

When I say worst I mean downright horrible sites.

One is the first site I ever built. It was a miserable attempt but for some reason it got into DMOZ only a couple of weeks after I submitted it about a year and a half ago. I had no alt tags, no inbound links, no PR, no page title, was nowhere in the first 100 results for any keywords or combos, yet got listed right away.

Now I have a couple sites hitting top 3 results on Yahoo, G, and MSN for almost all of my targeted keywords and DMOZ couldnt care less.

 

I have seen a few hobby sites owned by some editors which made me feel like a kick ass designer (no offense, I outsource design)
Maybe it makes some of them feel better about themselves. From what I understand though, it doesn't matter how bad or good the design is though.

I have my little mini directory and when I look for new sites, I want sites that offer something that is not already in my directory. I guess that is what you call unique content, in order to make the directory richer overall. The problem is when you pick the next best thing rather than look around for something better.

 

Sites are evaluated based on content, not on design, you are right.

And yes, even though there are guidelines and standards and peer review processes, there will be some variability between listings. I don't think that is avoidable.

And if the ODP has listed a site which has no other rankings in SEs, and no tags and no.. well, all the things that make it visible to search engines, then the way I see it, in that regard the ODP has done its job, I guess.

 

Maybe I didnt post that right. I am not saying that I am being ignored because of design, I am simply suggesting that the more a site looks like it will not rank better than a "competitors" site, the higher the chances are of it getting into DMOZ.

My sites that do rank well are being ignored. My sites that suck got right in. I submitted several to the same category and the worst got in. What does this tell us?

 

Maybe those of yours being "ignored" are not eligible for a listing. The two sites in you signature are not listable (lack of content and affiliate site)

It tells me that you are trying to scam DMOZ - have you actually read the guidelines about "related" sites and NOT submitting them.

 

The two in my sig are new and being worked on. Hence them being in my sig. I havent even submitted them.

The sites I have submitted are far better than most in the category I have been trying to get them into.

 

I am considering it from a users point of view. There was not and still is not anything on that site that could be considered useful. It was a practice site, my first.