How to successfully add your site to DMOZ

Nowadays having a site included in the DMOZ is essential. Most of the search engines assign too much credit to the DMOZ.
A site which is included in the DMOZ will have a PR of at least 4 or 5 at the next Google PR update.

Last year over 5 thousand new editors were admitted. Well, with so many editors who work for free and for a cause why are there still thousands of sites to approve? This remains an open question.

I have been studying this issue and have discovered that plenty of the editors have only made themselves editors so that they can list their own sites…obviously.

• Now that their sites are already included they don’t even bother inserting other ones. Why is that?
• They have no interest inserting sites which will compete with theirs. We all know this is true, however, how will you prove an editor didn’t include your site which, by the way, is much better than his? You can’t and you run the risk of never having your site included. The evidence they ask for is so hard to obtain that it is not worth the effort and even less worth the risk.
• After having their sites listed why add other ones? You can’t prove that either. There is nothing that will make them work even a little per month. There are directories which have had no new sites added for years and no one cares. Nobody bothers to monitor the editors to see when they were last online, to see which was the last site they approved or the last one they rejected.

There are, of course, good editors, those who work for a cause. Unfortunately they are few. The webmasters which include their sites in these categories can consider themselves lucky since at best they only have to wait a month to see their site included in the directory, if it is good and abides by the DMOZ norms. The others can wait for years and will probably never see their site listed.

The master editors have to understand that nowadays the search engines are a million dollar business. Everyone wants to have their site listed in the DMOZ even if they have to pay for it. Don’t be surprised if there are people out there who pay $5000 or more to have their site included in the DMOZ. There is also no shortage of editors who would accept that money. We all know they exist and they always will.

At the Resource-Zone forum there are a lot of things which are not allowed, one of them is to complain about the editors. If you do so the topic will probably (with 99,9% certainty) be closed. No complaints accepted.

The arrogance with which some of the editors answer the questions is unbelievable. The answers follow along the lines of: I am the boss and I will do what I want.



What options do I have to see my site listed in the DMOZ?

1. Be an editor. This is the best way to have your site included in the directory. The problem is getting accepted as an editor. It is essential to be able to write English well. Write a good text and give a few examples of sites you built or helped build. Don’t include sites that sell anything since if you do you will probably not be accepted. Describe yourself well: who you are, why you want to be an editor and what level of Internet experience you’ve got. If the text is good you will quite probably be accepted. If you don’t know how to write well or don’t know how to do it find someone who will do it for you, even if you have to pay them. Believe it when I tell you that it is money well spent.
   
2. Find out who the editor of the directory to which you want to add your site is and visit his site. Find his email or a way to contact him in the site. Then write to him saying that you visited his site and that you were impressed with its quality and contents. Tell him that your site is related to his but does not have the same quality (let him think that he has a good site and that yours is inferior). Tell him more about the site and inflate his ego. Ask him if he won’t add your link to his site even if it’s on the least visited page. Let him think that he is the one with the power. Tell him that you have tried to add your site to the DMOZ but that up till then it has not been included. Don’t mention the DMOZ again; he might suspect that you know he is the editor. End the email in a formal manner and include your site and phone number in the email’s signature. Now all that is left for you to do is wait. With any luck your site will be listed in the directory and you’ll gain a link in his webpage.
   
3. Use the regular method, in other words: Find the most adequate directory for your site, fill in the form and pray that your site is seen by an editor…

Good Luck.

 

Ouch. What a different outlook on DMOZ than my experience. I can’t speak for all but I can tell you that I have never encountered editors editing just for personal gain. Im not saying it never happens, it may. But I have never personally seen it. Most of the editors I see enjoy building the directory, cleaning up cats, and helping out where and when they can. Some do a lot, some do a little. I come in contact with many editors that have listed thousands of sites. Now, lets say they listed all there owns sites, lets say 10 not to send up red flags, they still listed thousands of others.
From my own experience, I do not have my own sites to list, yet enjoy listing other sites when I can. And most are shopping sites.

 

aaron_nimocks is correct. I think webmasters put waaaay too much weight on dmoz listings. I may help some, but not enough to make or break the success of a site. They are so many ways to promote a site that dmoz pales in comparison.

 

infodig,

Here is a complete and unedited "Copy & Paste" from my own post to a thread at the Google Support Group that back up your statement above:

Like the others posts mentioned, my own experience too, I have learn that if you work hard, improving and optimizing your site, you can get almost any ranking without been listed by DMOZ.

Thanks,

 

I am a former DMOZ editall not a current one, but I was a regular RZ contributor when an editor. I can shed some light.

The first foul was your own, by including an URL in a pseudo signature, and this is a strictly enforced no-no for RZ, hence it being edited out. The purpose of RZ is now restricted to editor applications and reporting bad links etc. At one time it was a honey trap for spammers to enquire about their multiple site submissions - at least half of all posters were experienced spammers probably trying to get feedback on whether their latest scam had worked then kicking up a stink when it hadn't.

I must admit to having used sarcasm in a reply before - when faced with a lying toe-rag pretending innocence who did not realise I had full access to his/her entire submission history. But in general terms, where there is no evidence the poster is a spammer or the enquiry appears innocent the vast majority of RZ editors deplore such behaviour from their colleagues.

You won't get one - the site will be listed, or not. DMOZ is not a listing service, it is almost an academic project for cataloging websites editors think may be of interest to users of the Directory. Time between submitting and reviewing is not a concept recognised within the project. Submitting is not what most people think of a submission to be. Rather it is a suggestion - hey here is a good site, what do you think? Trouble is that a million or two others have done the same thing. About 12,000 sites a month are listed from people suggesting them and about 240,000 suggestions a month are made. Work out the chances! Most sites are now listed through being found in search engine searches and link pages and if a category already seems to have a comprehensive representative sample of sites covering most aspects of a topic it is unlikely anyone is looking for more to add. In DMOZ terms you are not a customer purchasing a (free) service but a potential supplier of material making a pitch for inclusion in the project.

The nature of what DMOZ really does is not properly explained, it is easy for submitters to get the wrong idea that it is a free promotional tool and for DMOZ to correct that impression. You should not be made to feel belittled for not realising that.

And that is deplorable - if you feel an editor has breached the guidelines on communications then there are official channels you can pursue.
http://www.dmoz.org/guidelines/communication.html#abuse and
http://dmoz.org/cgi-bin/feedback.cgi?

Unfortunately with 240,000 suggestions a month the overhead of notifications, for a voluntary project, has been deemed too high and the vast majority of people who would benefit are spammers in any case. It would mean a lot of time spent on picking out the non-spammers just to notify them, time better spent on reviewing sites. Again DMOZ could overcome this complaint by being very clear on this point in the submission process.

And the happiest people about that are editors - they don't edit to impact on SERPS and the less effect it has the less spam and hassle detracting from the cataloging project.

This is a common gripe and misconception about DMOZ. It can never ever list every small business site that exists nor does it attempt to do so. Rather it attempts to list representative sites for each topic to cover as much original content on that subject as is possible. And editors, as volunteers, object strongly to being seen as a business's unpaid web promoter - it wasn't why they joined. Even so, DMOZ does, by accident rather than design, help 24,000 to 30,000 webmasters every month for no charge, which isn't bad for a bunch of unpaid volunteers.

So I am sorry that you feel you were mistreated and have such a poor experience of the project via your experience. Much of it is down to misunderstandings that DMOZ could easily correct to avoid you getting the wrong impression and some of it is down to bad manners for which there is no excuse if you did nothing to deserve it. If your site meets the criteria I do hope that one day the directory does list it. Good luck!

 

Agreed. Who cares about dmoz. It's the last place I'd want my sites.

infordig, on DP you can learn many other and better ways for getting traffic. If a site is good, offers something original then it will get people talking and lead to natural links. ;-)

Good luck, dude.

 

That sucks. Do you know who did list?

 

DMOZ isn't there to promote your site and SERPS play no part in how a description is written - the reverse in fact, an editor caught describing a site specifically to affect SERPS will find their account disabled. Sounds like a typical description written to comply with guidelines. Editors are obliged to remove keywords and phrases and describe what is on the site. If that is show recaps and news then you have got exactly what the guidelines say you should get. If that is not what you want then... don't submit the site.*

* sorry - just noticed you didn't submit it. It is bad luck then if it isn't what you wanted and the only guaranteed way of getting it removed is to take down the site and report it as a broken link.

In addition to editors in the hierarchy of the category concerned over 320 editors have editall rights or above. It could be any one of them. Only the editing notes will show exactly who and anyone that releases that information is guilty of abuse and will be removed. For good reason - stalkings and threats of extreme violence have been known.

 

I meant submit. Maybe a friend/family member did it, thinking it was a "favour".

That sounds crazy... "stalkings and threats of extreme violence" - do you mean by dmoz editors/editalls/whatever they want to call themselves?

 

DMOZ editors have been stalked and had violence threatened against them in the past. Hence privacy is taken very seriously. A corrupt editor once passed my name over to his paymaster after I removed some multiple entries he had and I started to get some very ominous emails addressed to my work email. Fortunately the creep was 10,000 miles away. So most editors tend to be very careful about information that can identify them. An editor was actually jailed in Turkey for listing Kurdish sites and editors elsewhere have been harrassed by government agencies so it isn't just disgruntled webmasters.

 

Is there such a thing as a "gruntled webmaster"?

 

That's crazy. People take being (or not) in dmoz too seriously. But dmoz could solve its problems by really becoming ODP rather than the current FDP/CDP state. Privacy can be retained, but an open system, where what goes on is under the scrutiny of everyone interested in dmoz, would help kick out corruption (and make the Open mean something). But whatever, just my $0.02 (am I tempting dmoz Canned Responses (tm) from current editors?).

Good to know nothing very bad ever happened to you, Brizzie.

 

This may be off topic, but someone on a "internet forum" made him feel low?

 

I take it you haven't yet visited The Resourceless Zone?

 

I agree with the first part of that sentence, but not with the second part: websites for all businesses, large or small, are listable somewhere in ODP, provided they meet guidelines for content. Most small businesses will be listed in the Regional branch, according to their business address. And plenty of editors strive every day to find and list such sites. But brizzie knew that

 

By "nor does it attempt to do so" I mean that editors have worked out that with infinitely more websites than time to list them it would be impossible to list every small business site that exists. The key is quality and the barrier steadily rises as the selection of available sites grows. And the height of the barrier is variable depending on the sites it is competing with in the category. A one page site that is nothing more than a business card or a Yellow Pages ad is not going to be accepted.

Yes you do - "provided they meet guidelines for content"

 

Yes I have visited the resource zone, and some may be a little strict, but in the end it is just someone on a computer just typing words back to you.

I would never let someone on the net get to my feelings, or get into a serious argument with anybody on a forum; it is a waste of time. In the end no one really accomplish anything, and one day the post will be deleted / erased anyway.

Forums I visit (unrelated forums) I have seen worse. I am just saying if he was hurt by a response on the resource zone, maybe he should not be online on the internet, or visit forums.

 

Everyone is different, dude .. a compound of emotions and someone who thinks they're God giving a guy (or girl) the run around might end up making them feel low. That's just them ... they're free to be on the internet and visit forums. And feel emotions. We're all just human.