10+ year wait?

I've submitted our site once every 2 years since 1998. We've never been accepted-- let alone ever heard anything. Is this normal? All the FAQs say a year or two could be your wait. Should it take over 12 years for well established company to get into DMOZ?

Not all websites are listable here. You can self check whether or not yours is.


Some over enthusiastic website suggesters can be mistaken for spammers - and we treat spammers the same way that you treat spammers.


We haven't (quite) been going for 12 years yet .

I could be wrong, but if I recall correctly, I do believe DMOZ launched in the summer of '98

I'm definitely not spam, and I'm fully listable. Our competitors have been listed for as long as we've been trying to get in. I've been very wary about the over enthusiastic problem-- that's why I've waited every two years to submit again. Just seems nuts that it's harder to get into DMOZ than it is for my kid to get into college.

Is there anything else I can do?

pcp-ip said:

I'm definitely not spam, and I'm fully listable. Our competitors have been listed for as long as we've been trying to get in. I've been very wary about the over enthusiastic problem-- that's why I've waited every two years to submit again. Just seems nuts that it's harder to get into DMOZ than it is for my kid to get into college.


Is there anything else I can do?

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Yes of course we have noticed that one that you are not a spammer...but there is nothing that you could do since you have been waited for 10 years now...Well it doesn't matter if you just wait for another 10.

demas said:

Yes of course we have noticed that one that you are not a spammer...but there is nothing that you could do since you have been waited for 10 years now...Well it doesn't matter if you just wait for another 10.

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Make sure you drilled down to the lowest category possible, use your website email and make sure you fill out all information correctly. Other than than that I would move on to building links to your site Dmoz is not the only good directory out there!

use your website email

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The e-mail address used when suggesting a site has no bearing whatsoever on when or if a site will be listed.

pcp-ip said:

I've submitted our site once every 2 years since 1998. We've never been accepted-- let alone ever heard anything. Is this normal? All the FAQs say a year or two could be your wait. Should it take over 12 years for well established company to get into DMOZ?

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I've been waiting over 5 years, and I thought I had it bad. lol

Hi, someone has just posted a link to this forum on Bing Community. So I thought I'd pop over to get the low down on DMOZ.

10 year wait and still nothing?? I submitted our site in 2007. I submitted again I think last month - since our site is now well established across the internet and carries a good PR. We are still not on the directory and I haven't received any notification to say received, reviewed or rejected. Our local competitors are listed.

It does seem a bit weird to just tell people to submit to a category and wait for an indeterminate amount of time.

I understand that DMOZ is free - but giving people no indication of a timeframe and no indication of whether a request has been received or reviewed seems quite odd to me.

Could the directory simply not be updated to send a notification email to submitters to confirm the request is in the queue, and then another email when its been reviewed to say accepted or rejected?

DMOZ claims to want to have the most comprehensive directory of the net - yet it seems to operate more like an exclusive directory than a comprehensive one.

Video Production UK said:

Could the directory simply not be updated to send a notification email to submitters to confirm the request is in the queue ?

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All the submitters already receive that confirmation at the end of the submission process.

Video Production UK said:

and then another email when its been reviewed to say accepted or rejected ?

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No, because all submitters can easily know when their sites get listed, since they will appear on the public side of the directory.

If a site gets rejected, and this happens because our Guidelines say that's not listable,
there is no valid or useful reason to inform the submitter of that decision.

I understand that DMOZ is free - but giving people no indication of a timeframe and no indication of whether a request has been received or reviewed seems quite odd to me.

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Given the nature of the directory and its volunteer editors, there's no way we could give any kind of a reasonable timeframe estimate - the best we could give is that it could be anywhere from zero seconds (for sites editors find and list on their own) to infinity, which isn't really useful information to anyone.

DMOZ claims to want to have the most comprehensive directory of the net - yet it seems to operate more like an exclusive directory than a comprehensive one.

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I can see how it looks like exclusivity from the outside, but "exclusive" implies a deliberate selection process across the board, something you might see on someone's personal links list or a true "best of" type of directory. I think of us more as organized chaos, where the listing of sites is more or less random. "The most comprehensive" is a comparison to other human-edited directories; it doesn't mean that we have managed to list every listable site in every possible category.

mauri said:

If a site gets rejected, and this happens because our Guidelines say that's not listable,
there is no valid or useful reason to inform the submitter of that decision.

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Yes there is a useful reason for this. Lots of people out there will keep resubmitting their sites because they thought their sites had been turned down eventhough their sites have not yet been reviewed. Sequently, it's a waste of time for both submitters and editors :unsure:

Sequently, it's a waste of time for both submitters and editors

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Subsequent suggestions merely overwrite earlier ones so the editors don't waste any time at all . They can and do cause processing delays though and can even be mistaken for spamming. We treat spammer the same way the you do.

Hello all.

Related to the discussion you guys have started here about the time some of you has been waiting for. Well I would like to ask who can some one send his complains at when his site has not been accepted on purpose. One of your editors for a specific country has been accepting request from betting websites which him self is involved in too ... thats called corruption and it has to stop here and now. So who is the one responsible for deactivating this person from being editor and probably erase all of those betting websites he has been accepting ON PURPOSE and being unfair to the rest who is requesting their sites to be submitted. So ?

When the system is available again, the place to report alleged abuse is our public abuse reporting system at http://report-abuse.dmoz.org. Include as much evidence and information as possible and someone will investigate.

Gregy said:

One of your editors for a specific country has been accepting request from betting websites which him self is involved in too ... thats called corruption

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This on its own is not abuse. If websites are listable according to DMOZ guidelines an editor is allowed to list websites he is affiliated with.
Ofcourse he may not give these websites any special treatment (title and description) and he may only list them in the right category.

motsa said:

When the system is available again, the place to report alleged abuse is our public abuse reporting system at http://report-abuse.dmoz.org. Include as much evidence and information as possible and someone will investigate.

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Thanks will do ... I just cant stand that this editor is using dmoz to benefit for him self while he rejects EVEERYbody's else request to submit their site.

@PvGool. Well, when you are an editor for example and never accept other people's requests to submit their sites but you ONLY have listed your own web sites and your customer's web sites, what do you call that? Where I come from it is a form of corruption. Being an editor at dmoz it should be much more than just a smart ass. Hope you get my point.

Gregy said:

@PvGool. Well, when you are an editor for example and never accept other people's requests to submit their sites but you ONLY have listed your own web sites and your customer's web sites, what do you call that? Where I come from it is a form of corruption. Being an editor at dmoz it should be much more than just a smart ass. Hope you get my point.

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That is not what I wrote.
You stated that listing websites an editor is affilated with is abuse. That on its own is not abuse. An editor is allowed to list his own sites as long as they comply with our guidelines.
We will look at your abuse report and the evidence you provide.