Why Most Submissions Are Rejected By DMOZ

Countless number of submissions is received by DMOZ directory but only perhaps 1% or less meets with DMOZ submission guidelines. Below are some guidelines:

What Title Should Consist?
- As what it appears on the actual web site
- Contain only the company's name or the title of the site
- Begin with capital letter for each word
- Use caps for a non-acronym

What Title Should NOT Consist?
- Contain descriptive information about the site. Descriptive information goes in the description field.
- Written as the URL. The URL goes in the URL field
- Padded with a meaningless string of keywords. This is keyword Spam.
- Use "&" or "and" in the title field UNLESS it appears this way on the site.
- Use emphatic punctuation (the exclamation points).
- Only use acronym as title. Include the full form of the name followed by the acronym in ( )

One must NEVER submit to DMOZ unless your website has met with the DMOZ submission criteria. This is because once submitted, your website URL will be recorded and if the submission fails, it might have a negative impact on future submissions.

From my experience providing DMOZ submission services to my clients, below are some "unwritten" DMOZ criteria:

- Website generally should be of 2 years of age and above
- Must NOT have any broken links
- Well-designed and professional-looking website
- Loading time is an important factor to consider

 

In my personal carreer I have accepted well over 90% of all sites I have reviewed, but some categories suffer more from sites that do not mee the criteria than others.

It is important to note that we do NOT judge on presentation, it is entirely on content.

Also that whilst it is important to get the title and description right, I have never rejected a site because they are not correct, I just correct them, but that means I spend less time actually listing sites and sometimes I have cosen to spend my timwe reviewing sites where the title and descrption are good rather than those that are bad, but that means delay rather than rejection.

Yes pleeease get them right but it won't cost you a listing.

Unique content is far more important than anything else.

 

Submitting a proper title and description will make it stand out to an editor, because we get so few, and it may increase your chances of being reviewed before other sites in that category. I look for those, and if I see that a site suggester has at least made an attempt to comply, I get all warm and fuzzy and I'll choose to look at that site first.

However, it is an editors job to replace a noncompliant title and description and a submitted site suggestion would not be rejected for that reason, most of them are noncompliant, it just makes our job a little easier and faster.

It would not affect future submissions by that webmaster.

That's false. We never check the age of a website, it's immaterial to us, we only look for unique content.

That's good advice, we'd probably consider the site as still under construction, but, it might or might not be rejected for that reason.

Absolutely false, we don't judge a sites design or how sophisticated it is, unless it's so bad as to be unnavigatable. Some of the best and most charming sites I've seen have been very simple.

That's partially true, as we have automated tools that check urls and if it's extremely slow loading, the tool may think think it's a bad url and delist it until an editor can investigate. We might even note in the description that it's a slow loading site, but, I've only done that once that I can remember.

That was a very helpful post, frederrick. It gives us a chance to disspell a few misconceptions about what we do. Please ask any questions you may have, .

 

With over 10,000 Geocities pages listed, I'd tend to agree with Crowbar, lol.

Nothing against that wonderful free host, but erm, most are a bit less then professional, though many do have some decent content.

 

Aside from the 2 yr thing (that's nice, just not needed) it wouldn't hurt anyone to look at that list every time they submit.

We frequently re-write title and descrips, but if someone sends in a guideline compliant version it makes it a faster edit... and honestly I can think of many times I was gonna get in just ONE more for the session and got to some keyword stuffed blarg in all-caps or with the entire description in title case and decided to let a different one be my last of the night.

I really don't think the ODP descrip is as important as a lot of people think (YMMV) but if it's important to you, know that if you have a keyword or two you wanted in the description it's more likely to stay if the editor looks at the one submitted and says "hey, looks pretty good to me". In that sense it pays to be selective and write a guideline compliant descrip that seamlessly works in one or two that are important instead of stuffing it so full of spam the editors blanks it out and starts over.

There used to be one submitter that built an industry specific regional product... she ALWAYS sent in descrips and titles that were letter perfect. I got to where I looked for her work coming in. Hey, it was an easy edit. Editors are only human (well, except maybe Robozilla and one or two of the metas )... make their job easier to do and it makes your life easier too.

Nice post Frederrick... thanks for the comment. [rep added]

 

editing sites on dmoz, I will agree that most submissions are just garbage. Using appropriate titles and descriptions will make me look twice at your submission.

The unique content angle is a bit harder for my category because it's basically a category for turnkey sites in the first place. Since there are few ways to distinguish a turnkey site, and dmoz guidelines say that you're not supposed to list just everything that comes along, a lot of it has to do with presentation, in my category at least.

In order to stand out your site should look professional, not trick the user in it's navigation, and include at the very least, all the standard features that the turnkey script allows but does not by default enable. If it's just someone tossing up a turnkey script with a standard free template and didn't bother to enable the standard (but not default) features, you have 0% chance of getting listed in my category. The best way to get listed is to have programmed some unusual feature for your site and mention it in a tasteful way in the description.

 

Yup I absolutely agree with your points. Perhaps if I may add, the content also that plays a crtitical factor to determine whether a site is listable or not.

It is not how good your site is but it is how your site may value add the current ODP listings. Hence bottom line is - unique content, niche info/service.

Regards

 

Can you make some form for submission?

 

As crowbar said.

I can only tell you that there are some editors - including me - which dont care about submitted "titles" and "descriptions" . In my huble experience in ODP have noticed that almost 90% of them are wrong, and they include what webmasters want, not what the site is about.

IMHO the most important thing when someone is making submission is to find the proper cat where his site can be included. The proper one, not the desired one

 

But it is nice to find the ones which are done right, a submitter can usually see the style by looking at the descriptions of other listed sites in the same category. At the end of a long session I usually try and find an 'easy' list where the webmaster has either obviously tried or got it right enough, so I can do a last quick list.

Sites to wrong category, are easy to just ignore. I have some now, sat at the top of a category where it says "sites will not be listed at this level, leave them here and it could be years before they are looked at' and it might be. Also if I have to move sites they get sent from the Q they have been sat in to another Q, so it delays them being reviewed twice so they wait longer than just being in the right category in the first place.

Trying to get the description right attracts my attention and being in the right category means that they will be listed, if they are any good, and not just moved on.

 

As others have said, it varies a great deal by the category.

I edit in most of the technology blog categories, and some of them have hundreds of submissions I'm never going to get to. The ones with clear, well-written descriptions get attention first, whether or not the description is in close to what will be my final form.

That goes triple if you're submitting to the category I edit about SEO blogs. I really don't need any more in there anyway; for a limited subject area, it's chock-full of sites. And besides -- if somebody can't get their DMOZ submission right, how likely are they to know much about SEO anyway?

I have the vast majority of the good/important ones anyway, although there's one well-known exception due to a bribery red flag.

 

Frederrick
I recieved a site review from my hosting company (1 and 1) yesterday and this is their suggestion for my title

"Your TITLE tag is 14 characters long, which is within proper indexing guidelines. For optimal results, make sure it specifically describes your product or service, makes proper use of 3 or 4 keywords, and is between 10 and 150 characters long."

What's everyones opinion?

 

Is there someway to tell if a site has been banned from dmoz.org?

We have seen various online tools for a couple of the major search engines that will tell if a site has been banned. It seems many directories do not acknowledge submissions or rejection of submissions AND penalize/ban if the site submission is repeated.

If the web master doesn't know if the submissions was successful, he/she will periodically retry the submission, unknowingly penalizing the site.

This is just one of the problems we have run in to. So it would be helpful if there was someway to tell if a site was banned if the directory/se doesn't provide that information.

In this instance, is there a tool to determine if directories like dmoz.org have rejected the site?

 

there is no such tool for Dmoz . If you have submitted pre-2007, you should try once more . And as you may have heard , most editors like to make their own pick for sites over user submissions.

 

Not for DMOZ there isn't.

When you've suggested a website to DMOZ, the final screen of the transaction begins:

Is this confirmation message not clear enough?

 

Not unless you're an editor. Why would the Directory want to inform the bad guy that his little trick of trying to get multiple listings didn't work and he should try a different method?

I remember a time when I would edit a category and find 4 to 10 copies of the same site waiting to be reviewed and had to waste my time deleting all the copies. That's one form of spamming, but it's more of an irritant than anything else, and if your persistent, it could lead to being banned.

Sites don't get banned willy nilly at the editors whim, you have to work hard to get that status by submitting multiple times or being some kind of dishonest miscreant, trying to get an advantage over the competition.

You should be happy that we spend the time protecting your listings. If you're honest and don't try to deliberately work the system, you have nothing to fear, if you aren't, it is our great pleasure to find you and ban your ass. Why should honest site owners have to put up with your selfish shananigans of self promotion. Play by the rules. (speaking in general, not to the poster)

You would not be banned or penalized for the occassional resubmission, but it doesn't help either the submitter or the Directory to do that.

 

I know why several several are banned (like shoemoney). Why can't I know if I myself am banned? It would makes sense ya know, to allow people to know. With the investigations done like they are it would even likely be in the best interest of all. It would not be all that hard to get certain sites banned, then the site owners would have no clue.

And it's can not be a matter of confidentiality. That only applies to editors. If it's a matter of people figuring out little tricks, then maybe they should reconsider that as well. If a little trick works once, fails once, it's got a 50/50 success rate...that's MUCH higher then standard submission/acceptance.

 

That's just wishful thinking on my behalf

If our focus were on submissions and that was our primary purpose for existing, ie we were a listing service, then we would be handing out information about every submission, but we aint. Submissions are a concession to allow people to suggest sites we might like to list.
As websys says

(though for me that should read "many" not "most")

If someone sends a site that is affiliated or mirrored etc etc etc and it gets banned, why should we bother to tell them, when they tried to cheat us and when we do not generally do lookups.

Few sites get banned for spamming, simply because they submit the same site a few times and these days it is put to the bottom of the Q. So the submitter simply gives themselves an even longer wait.

You are more likely to get banned for spaming because you have submitted the same site to multiple incorrect categories or submitted mirrored and affiliated sites to multiple categories.

The oft offered advice on here of "submit and forget" is good advice, but if you have reason to fear because you are trying to cheat the system then be aware that all the sites will be banned.

 

To attick:
For the ODP perspective on your question, they will most often use the name of the company, so if you are building a website for a company, it doesn't really matter what the title of the site is. If it's not a site for a company, then I think you would be doing surfers a good service by making the title describe what is on the site.

Hope this helps.

 

In our case, the problem is that we paid someone to do website submissions. They did this using automated software. We then found out that many directories/search engines ban sites for that type of submission.

Now here we sit, wondering what directories/search engines have banned our website due to this misplaced trust on our part? No one here was trying to spam, or dupe or do anything shady, but because of policies of not telling sites they are banned/denied from the directories/search engines we have no way of knowing our status on those directories/search engines.

A screen message of

"Submission Received

Your site submission has been received."

really tells us nothing other than the page processed once "Enter/Submit" was pressed.