Curious why a primary website is not listed in DMOZ

I manage several websites. The largest and most popular is Designing Online located at http://www.designingonline.com . Several years ago the site was listed in DMOZ, but disappeared from the listings at some point :icon_ques and all efforts to get it listed again have never succeeded for over 3 years.

I am not sure what impact this may or may not have on traffic, but I am just curious as to how this website, which beats the likes of Martha Stewart, HGTV and Home Depot on Google searches for terms such as Home and Garden Directory or Home and Garden Resources ...can't get a listing in DMOZ.

If a Google search recognizes this site as a primary authority and source for Home and Garden information, what is the reason that DMOZ disagrees and will not list the site?

Like I said, my primary motivation now is curiosity since i have tired of reapplying again and again every 6 months or so. As a helpful note, and i see your forum will no longer respond to questions about site status, is to provide a simple database that can be referenced as to why a site was declined or removed. Keep it simple. Allow a person to search for a url and see the decline reason...crappy, wrong category, 404 error, no content, whatever... and make it clear the decision is final and that it is necessary to fix the issue and then reapply.

At least this would resolve the frustration of not knowing when, why or where a listing may or may not occur.

Meanwhile, if i can get feedback about my queary, i will appreciate any input provided that helps satisfy my curiousity.

Thank You,

David Nelmes
Editor - Dreams Alive Magazine
Webmaster - Designing Online

We don't provide blow by blow reasons for our actions or lack of them with regard to an individual website. History has shown us that such conversations serve no useful purpose, often end badly and divert us from our real mission. Your main question is verging on a status report request and we aren't going to answer it.

As to the database idea, we have one of course - it's just that, for reasons that have been thoroughly explored far too often in this forum already, we choose not to make it public.

In general, we are really keen on listing websites that contain gems of unique information. We don't get excited by those which consist primarily of affiliate links and articles also available elsewhere. I haven't evaluated http://www.designingonline.com so I don't know which of those two classes it falls into. You presumably do.

If a Google search recognizes this site as a primary authority and source for Home and Garden information, what is the reason that DMOZ disagrees and will not list the site?

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Mmm, Google search results are not a reliable indication of whether a site is a primary authority on a subject or not. For example, do a search on just about any hotel and you're more likely to get a ton of reservation sites before you ever see the hotel's actual site.

[Disclaimer: This is not a site review - what I give here is general information]

There are only three reasons that I can think of for a site being listed, and then delisted.

The first is that the site is no longer available, the second is that the contents change such that what was listable is no longer listable, and the third is that an editor listed the site, another editor reviewed that listing (which may take place a long time afterwards - there is no formal process) and decided that it is not listable.

For the last two reasons, no amount of resubmission of the site would cause it to get listed. For the first, often editors will leave a site for re-check for several months, and then re-add when the site becomes available again, all without needing a re-submission. There are a small number of cases where the site remains offline for a long period of time and then a resubmission would be appreciated.

Since you have resubmitted a few times, either your submissions are awaiting review, or editors have decided not to list the site. Either way, there is really nothing more that you can do.

Alucard said:

There are only three reasons that I can think of for a site being listed, and then delisted.

The first is that the site is no longer available, the second is that the contents change such that what was listable is no longer listable, and the third is that an editor listed the site, another editor reviewed that listing (which may take place a long time afterwards - there is no formal process) and decided that it is not listable.

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A 4th possible reason:
The DMOZ guidelines changed. The site wasn't listable anymore according to the new guidelines and as a result was removed.

>If a Google search recognizes this site as a primary authority and source for Home and Garden information

Jim briefly kicked this dead horse, but I think it needs a serious flogging.

GOOGLE RESULTS ARE NOT ANY KIND OF RECOGNITION!

Google results come from an algorithm that has been proven (in Google tests, and in Googletech judgment) to work better (on a handful of searches) than anything else they could come up with (so far). It is likely that only a few hundred thousand of sites (less than a HUNDREDTH of ONE percent of all of their pages) have ever actually been looked at.

This is not dissing Google: I think their algorithm works pretty well. But it is susceptible to malicious manipulation. And historically, we've had a long line of spammers waiting at this forum door to come in and say, "Look, [I spammed Google so hard its heart-cockles shrivelled, until] my site is recognized by Google as one of the best [search-engine-results-optimized] sites on the web. So why can't I [manipulate you in the same way until I] get my site listed on the ODP?"

(The words in brackets aren't usually spoken out loud until the conversation gets shrill, but it's always pretty obvious that they are in the air from the beginning.)

The answer is: we aren't Google. It takes a different kind of malicious manipulation to fool us. And it's a good thing -- with both the ODP and Google in the world, malicious manipulators have to do a lot more work, and take on a greater risk -- which is good for all real content providers and all surfers. So the fact that we are different from Google is, in a very profound sense, our ideal, our justification for existance, our triumph. Don't look so surprised when we succeed at doing what we so badly want to do, and try so hard to do.

OK, I'm done, you can drag the carcase off to the knacker's.

Either way, there is really nothing more that you can do.

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If I may disagree slightly...

One thing is to work on improving the site's content in a direction that requalifies it. Should a rejected site (which in this case its disappearance might suggest) ever change substantially in terms of developing reams of unique unsyndicated material of great interest to surfers - you know, stuff they cannot get anywhere else on the Internet, a gaping hole in the sum of human knowledge filled with something new and exciting, then it is worth letting us know and an editor will reconsider. It's rare but it happens. However, if the aim of the site is sponsorship revenue and it is doing OK thank you very much then changing the formula simply to re-enter DMOZ is probably not a sensible commercial decision.

And, without acknowledging that I have, or have not, looked at your site, I feel obliged to mention the term completeness.

If a hypothetical site made a huge deal about its forum while also claiming to be an authority site, and an editor took at look at the forum and saw very few postings, that is a strong argument that the site is not complete and does not merit a listing. Of course, this is all hypothetical, but I would thank that an authority site's forum, unless it is an obscure topic, should have a useful post count in the multple thousands, not a very few hundred....but then again, this is theoretical.

I appreciate your replies

I do appreciate your replies and insight into understanding better about what a DMOZ listing entails.

One thing I do pursue, however, is to embrace change as a means for growing, so if and when you see a site that has a forum with a few listings, perhaps before you conclude this to be a gauge of non-importance, you can conclude the forum is an upgrade from a previous flat-file version and perhaps you can conclude that this forum got hacked a few months ago, corrupting the database and losing all member data and that it has added much improved security measures but is engaged in an uphill battle to get people to get used to coming here again. ...just a thought.

With respect to affiliates, i agree that they have been abused, but I have found several that fit in so well with my website and I fail to see why this is a bad thing. I don't see what the difference is as to whether a company through Commission Junction is giving me 20% to sell a product or service as compared to a website owner who works out a deal with us to help them promote and sell a new book where we get a 20% commission. It's all just business....unless the website is about nothing else but listing and linking to affiliates.

Designing Online has a lot of original content as well as common content that we have embellished in some way and we have affiliates as well. We have blended this all together and are always looking at ways to improve our performance, so i will use the comments you have provided to take a fresh look at how to better prioritize and display our information.

Have a great day!

Some (I would say, most) of us consider the possibility that a forum with only a few posts is new, and are willing to reconsider the site at a later time.

However, we do not list sites which only have the potential to be listable.

As for affiliate links, the guidelines suggest that we consider whether a site has sufficient unique information after (mentally) blanking out the affiliate links. (Of course, there are many sites where there is nothing left after blanking out the affiliate inks....)

And I haven't looked at your site.

If a site has a forum but its primary purpose is not to be a forum site then usually I would ignore it unless it is developed well enough to warrant me mentioning it in the description. If it is a primary aspect of the site and struggling to get content then the webmaster has a problem - we are pointing our users at information they will find useful, not an empty space where information they might find useful might appear one day, or not as the case may be. The content has to be there already for the user (ours) to find it of interest and that is a key criteria for a listing. If the forum isn't doing well it might be detracting from the site as a whole and it is then worth thinking about whether it should be dumped altogether but then that doesn't impact on a DMOZ listing.

You say you have unique content but I did look at the site, and everything I clicked on and looked at was definitely not original. Three clicks and you're out - as an editor I would not waste time clicking every link in the hope that somewhere sometime I might find something original, I'll test a random sample - three or four is reasonable and if all are duds then there seems little point in trying another. If you have original content then put it in my face but if the syndicated stuff makes more money then forget your DMOZ entry because there are hundreds of others who will put the original stuff where I can see it easily. Embellishing material originating elsewhere does not, IMO, make it original in my view when making an editing decision.

As arubin says we mentally blank out affiliate material and judge what is left. Affiliate stuff does not have to be the "traditional" Commission Junction stuff, it can be obvious marketing blurb for items available from the original source on the Internet. Same rules apply. We blank out material that is non-original and affiliate schemes are one example but there are lots of other techniques editors are very experienced at spotting and dealing with.

The existence of affiliate links is not per se a disqualification. For example I have a site myself that has a reference book list for students and educators. I make around $25 a year because I have an Amazon affiliate link attached to each title. Next to each book I give my own assessment of the book which is sometimes that it is too expensive or not as good as others or only has monochrome pictures. Or suitable only for kids or only for professors. Now there is a lot of other stuff on the site but just taking the reading list the value lies in my reviews of the books, which are clearly objective and not marketing blurb, take away the fact that there are affiliate links attached to the titles and the value is still there. The $25 goes back to Amazon to buy more books by the way. Had I simply repeated the author or Amazon's leader text then the whole lot would be ignored when it comes to its contribution towards whether to list or not.