There are some sites that I may or may not have submitted to dmoz anywhere from 2 months to 2 years ago. I can't remember. Or possibly someone has already submitted the site to DMOZ (ex. previous SEO firm). How would I go about determining the status?
There isn't any for sure way to know unless you can find an editor with the right perms. Even then they would need the site URL and the category it was submitted to. Since not all the issues have been resolved with the recent dmoz outage, I don't think there is much that can be done right now. I dought any editor will look up multiple sites for you but you might get a responce here on a single particular site if you give the needed info and once all the server issues have been resolved.
Yeah dvduval, im sorta in the same boat as you - can remember submitting a fairly new site to dmoz back in Sept, then been reading about all the probs they have had. You get told not resubmit your url because it only adds to the back log to review but how do you know they still got all the records of recent submissions that could have been lost when the site went down. Well its been 4 odd months and im not holding my breath in hope of getting listed as there could be thousands of sites in the queue before me. Saw somewhere can be up to 2 years before listing approvals can be given! Surely the crediability and weight given to a DMOZ listing by search engines will be reduced, like google for seo and ranking purposes. Certainly seems to be unfair disadvantage to new sites that have not been able to get listed
First of all, to clarify there is no backlog in the eyes of editors and never really has been. The site suggestions have always just been one tool that the editors use to find good sites. The reason you are told not to resuggest your URL has nothing to do with a backlog. It has everything to do with it does you no good. Multiple resuggestions only help to slow down a review process not speed it up, and too many resuggestions could result in being labled as spam. The original suggestion never expires anyway, it waits until an interested editor takes action on it. . That action can be 1 of 3 things-move it to a better location to wait for review, add an appropriate title/description and list it, or determine it is not listable according to the guidelines and therefore it gets deleted. If the later occurs, there is still no need to resuggest because the vast majority of rejected sites could not be made listable without dumping everything and starting over from scratch. If you are concerned that the original suggestion was lost due to the technical problems dmoz had, one resuggestion to the proper category would not cause too much harm. Think of it not so much as 1000s ahead of you, but more like 1000's bobbing up and down beside you in the ocean. An editor comes along and sees all the bobbing heads and decides to pluck a few out that look promising. There really is no way to predict which ones, although a properly submitted site suggestion with an appropriate title and description may be more appealing to look at first. Since dmoz has never been concerned with SEO or PR, it is really irrelevant what credibility an SE gives to dmoz on such things. I doubt any search engine (especially google) concerns its self much with dmoz for ranking sites anyway, the only ones who seem to be hung up on that are the misinformed SEO's that see a listing as an advantage when it really is just another link.
Thanks for the heads up - copperdrum There seems to be lot of misconceptions and debate about the value of a site listing in DMOZ, guess i have read some of the incorrect or misinterpreted it. I probably have been over estimating the value of a listing but it certainly seems prized judging by the amount discussion going on here and else where. Just one of those things you like to tick off after going to the effort of establishing a brand new site. I will certainly think about resubmitting once more and make sure i pay abit more attention to submission guidelines to increase my chances. Only the one resuggestion of course
It is always a hot topic on this and other fourms sometimes (like in this case) its is a simple mistake based on misinterpretted or well intended but false information. Unfortunately more often it is purposeful misinformation meant only to confuse and upset those who aren't familiar and view the information as fact. Your welcome, glad the information was helpful.
So sounds like submitting every 2-3 months would make sense, and that one should try different categories if it appears the editor is not actively updating the category. As a side note, somehow "bobbing heads" doesn't sound like a very ideal strategy in idetifying the best sites.
Sounds like quite a few pending suggestions were lost - it might be a good idea to resubmit once that option becomes available again.
Why do I get the feeling that if submissions ever get opened again they will instantly crash the server (again)? From 0 to 10 million backlog in millisecond!
If this goes on much longer, Dmoz will become obsolete. Dmoz is a situation where a few people want to control everything, yet don't listen to what people are saying close enough. And people just below them are able to bend the rules to fit them, while everyone else below them really has no say. Dmoz was a great a great experiment that failed when it failed to organize into smaller subgroups.
After three months inactive editor logins will start expiring and since it is not possible for new editors to apply we should be seeing drastic drop in editor numbers, without submissions small niches will become totally useless (most of them have been dead for years anyway) especially since robozilla will delete 90% of websites in next run (on RZ I reported two dozen dead links found just by quick surfing so if let loose robozilla will commit genocide). So in few months we shall have directory of porn, pills, travel, ringtons and stained glass!