DMOZ Search Engine

Hi there,

My website is http://www.PrintsMadeEasy.com . I have been listed in the directory for over 1 month now but I still am not found within their "search". Do you know why this would be happening?

Also, the amount of traffic has not budged an inch since I finally got listed in the DMOZ. Do you think I should expect an increase in traffic to my website for the keyword "business cards". I was hoping that the fact that "PrintsMadeEasy" is not found within the DMOZ search also means that the database has not propagated to other engines using the database. Any information would be very helpful... because honestly I am getting a little scared that this business will not work the way that I thought it would. <img src="/images/icons/confused.gif" alt="" />

Thanks,
Brian

You're expecting too much too fast. The search database is NOT instantaneously updated, and even if it were, your site wouldn't make it into Google (or any one else's) search database for some time afterwards. ODP's search function hasn't been updated since late April, and it will be a while before it updates again. Check the bottom of the search results page to see the "last updated" date.

I am not an editor, meta or anything, but I can tell you that it can take several weeks (sometimes months) to get your site to show in the internal DMOZ search.

Secondly, the RDF dump (the directory database) that is used by many sites, including Google can take months to update. Google just got an update about a month ago, and it was the first refresh since probably december or even later.

DMOZ has been upgrading equipment and providing RDF dumps is not on their priority list (and understandably so).

The best advice I have ever gotten about search engine ranking is to do everything you can to create the best content available, list it in the directories, and then forget you have a site for 6 months.

Hi guys,

I really appreciate your replies! I am new to the game of "search engines" and I am really glad that I stumbled across this forum. I understand the delay with the database updates now. You don’t know how much it helps me.

Looks like I need to look for a temp job or something because my business won’t be working for a while. I have worked full-time on PrintsMadeEasy.com for 2 years now, and I thought that I would magically start getting orders within 3 months of opening. It has been over 5 months now and I am hurting <img src="/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" /> (programmers don’t always make good marketers )

Does anyone have a (very rough) clue about what kind of traffic is possible to gain through search engine optimization? I might breathe a little easier knowing if I am on the right track or not.

Also, what other directories are important to get listed in besides DMOZ and Yahoo?

Thanks,
Brian

I'm sure things will pick up for you. However, we don't really discuss non-ODP things here (such as what other search engines do with our data or when they update).

The best we can do is recommend sites like http://www.webmasterworld.com/ and http://searchengineforums.com/ <img src="/images/icons/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for links! Specifically regarding the DMOZ search engine... When you do a search for a keyword the results seem to be scattered between different categories and listings. Is there any method to the madness?

I certainly don't know the algorithms (i'm sure it's fairly complex), but it basically puts preference on those categories that have the most instances of a word in them or in the category names themselves. Dmoz search should not concern you very much as it's mostly used by editors and people submitting to dmoz. <img src="/images/icons/cool.gif" alt="" />