I'm working on promoting one of my sites and began to think about what I always do - make sure I include a submission to DMOZ. As I was doing the submission yet again this morning I started asking myself is DMOZ still relevant, is it even worth the submission? So what do you think is DMOZ still relevant an worthwhile? What type of directory would superceed it?
IMHO,I still think that DMOZ is the best directory to get your site listed,because of the Google factor.But think out of the box as well,if you spent alot of time submitting to high PR directories,your work will bear fruit over time. Here is a list of directories you can submit your site to: www.seo-reloaded.com/search-engine-friendly-directories/ Dassie
If you have a qualifying site and submit to the correct category then it is worth a few minutes submitting. Once you have submitted it is not worth worrying about - forget it and move onto other things and if it gets listed one day then that's a bonus, if not then you've only lost a couple of minutes.
Any submission to a free directory is worth the effort.. regardless of traffic.. who knows if that link will eventually prosper and produce traffic
But the problem is that people think that a DMOZ listing is somehow akin to winning the lottery jackpot, and they check every day after they have submitted to see if has been listed yet, and then they get worked up when it isn't. Submit, forget.
Submitting to DMOZ is certainly an exercise in patience. It took them nearly a year to list one of my sites. Then they put it in a "local" category. The site sells and ships products for the world and I submitted it to the proper retail category 5-6 times over the course of the year. DMOZ looked at the "Contact" page and decided to stick me in the "regional" category. So is it worth re-submitting for the world "retailer" category or am I doomed to exist as a regional store? Who knows, but after waiting a year for that, I've lost anything good to say about DMOZ.
Considering how little effort it takes to submit to DMOZ, I'd say it is well worth the effort. Just don't base an entire business plan on getting into DMOZ.
Without the URL a serving editor can't check but quite often a site that qualifies for Regional and another topical branch, say Shopping, may be listed in both. I have also come across sites sent to the Regional branch that should not have been. So it may have been an error, it may still be waiting for a Shopping review but got listed in Regional faster and you may end up with 2 listings. Who knows without the URL. But you got 1 listing and you are complaining? BTW the submission instructions say submit ONCE. If you submit 5-6 times over you are constantly sending the site to the end of the queue if the editor chooses to display submissions in date submitted order.
Getting listed IS like winning the lottery. People keep saying you have to submit to relevent directories, follow the guidelines, present unique content. I disagree... Take a catagory like this one... /http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Home_and_Garden/Furniture/Country_and_Rustic/Handcrafted/ Do you really think all of those sites are so different from each other as to deserve to be listed? Do you really think with all of those thousands of editors that they couldnt add a few each day? Is it so much to ask that a simple email be sent to the people who are rejected as to what they could improve or change to be listed? Id have to say that the majority of editors sign on to list a few sites and never return. Its a very old argument and Im not about to debate it over again. Ive seen quite enough debating at the ODP forum to last me 3 lifetimes.
I don't believe you. You bumped an old thread specifically to add your opinion to the debate. I'm familiar with that particular category so I can tell you with confidence that they do deserve to be listed. With the editor's server still down I can't check for certain, but if I recall correctly most of them are listed twice; once in the topical category and once in the appropriate Regional category. I know because I'm one of the editors who worked on that category and I created the dual listings where appropriate. Before you ask, no I wasn't paid and no I don't know the owners of any of those sites.
There are only about 7000 active ones and drooping, on average they list 2-3 sites per editor a month so to cleanup those million websites backlog in a month would take few hundred thousand new editors. Or even simpler make logs public like Wikipedia so conspiracy theories could finally be gone. You're probably right.
I'm not a Wikipedian so I could be wrong, but isn't Wikipedia a registered non-profit run from public donations? If it is, I would expect that the logs would be public. On the other hand DMOZ is owned by a private corporation, and fully funded by that corporation. Why in the world would anyone expect them to make their logs public? Added: LOL, Ivan you make me laugh!
You are probably spot on. But as long as they do add a *few* sites and not just their own then a couple of their competitors have a bonus too. If 70,000 of the editors who have joined had done that then that is maybe 200,000 listings that would not otherwise have been there - it all adds up. With a lottery if you win then there is some money waiting for you. With a DMOZ listing such riches are simply not there. Since most people report little if any traffic increase and the PR effect is marginal at best, non-existent at worst, getting listed is nothing like winning the lottery!
Because it makes a big deal of being founded in the spirit of Open Source, which is a collaborative methodology open to all. The secrecy of the logs makes it extremely easy for bad people to hide inside. I used to believe the internal line that the secrecy was to protect the directory from spamming but Wikipedia manages to do no worse with a completely open system. In fact because it is open there are thousands more eyes watching every page and anyone can get rid of it, you don't have to wait eons for a spam issue to be dealt with. DMOZ wants their cake and eat it - it is either Open Source or Big Corporate, not both. There was a pedophile who listed chat rooms within DMOZ - DMOZ secrecy means that person's identity will forever remain secret. I reckon that is a bad thing. Yes, there are threats made by disgruntled webmasters against editors and this would have to be taken into account. But the true open source projects do not seem to have that problem - perhaps those who make the threats are equally emboldened by the fact that their misdeeds will remain as secret as the logs.
Brizzie, as always you make good points. Personally, I wouldn't want to open up the logs because I don't want bad people seeing notes I may have placed on their submissions. Especially the pedophile sites. If the logs were open to the public I guarantee you that I wouldn't have gotten involved in the whole pedophile issue.
I have a feeling that in a true Open Source project those pedophile sites would not have been there in the first place. Because the b*****d who put them there would not have been brave enough to do so with without the protection of secrecy. I know Wiki had some dodgy pedophilia related sites listed as well - they were removed very quickly after the issue with DMOZ was revealed (didn't require a committee to sit for a month to decide) and their problem is really that people can still remain anonymous as you don't even have to log into an account to edit. To overcome both problems you need a system that makes people accountable for their actions. That said, the content of some notes I made were given to a webmaster by another editor and it resulted in a potentially nasty exchange. From that point on I rarely made any notes I would not want the webmaster to see. You have to work on the basis that whatever you write now is open to being leaked. If you opened up the logs now you would need to do so from that point on, not retrospectively for the very reasons you give - editors have operated on the basis of privacy and commented accordingly.