Don't know why my site can't get listed.

I am a trout fly fishing guide in Taupo New Zealand and have tried submitting my site on about 3 or 4 occassions - I realize that you are only meant to submit once but after I have seen the category edited and my site not having been added, with no feedback as to why, I am lost. Obviously there is something wrong or it doesn't measure up somehow to the editors requirements but I am lost as to how and why. The HTML has been validated, there are no spelling errors, it looks better than some of my competitors in the category and not as good as others. I have numerous other links and have received some quiding jobs through the site, so doubt if it could be to bad - but all a matter of opinion of course.

Is there some way to contact the editor via email or some other person within the open directory project who can tell me constructively what I need to change in order to get listed because as far as I can determine I have been following the guidelines.

While we understand your frustration, we really cannot provide the answers you are seeking.

More than 200 editors can edit in any given category (but won't neccessarily do so), and it is impossible to guess or forecast when any of them might wish to edit there.

There is really nothing you can ask in a private e-mail that cannot be asked in public, so many editors steadfastly ignore e-mails from people who have suggested sites, as no good usually comes from such e-mails.

You have really done all that you can do. You have suggested the site, there is little more you can do but wait. Our excellent FAQ addresses wait times and priorities. Bottom line, it could easily be two or more years until an editor with an interest in that category comes along to do some edits.

Further, changing your website just to please an unnamed ODP editor is a zero-sum game. You should build your website for your real visitors, not for some ODP editor. We are not your target audience, and if you do a great job of addressing your actual target audience, there is a very good chance that you will have incorporated the very things that an ODP editor looks for: namely content.

The vast majority of the time your biggest challenge is the numbers game: 600,000 categories and fewer than 10,000 active editors.

99% of the time - it's just numbers - Google shows 260,000 matches for "fly fishing guide" - DMOZ will never ever list all of those.

You just have to wait until someone decides to review your site, resubmitting, if anything, decreases or delays the chances of geting reviewed, and increases the chances of being annoying by spamming.

You could have legitimately submitted to two different categories - a fly fishing category and in http://dmoz.org/Regional/Oceania/New_Zealand/Waikato/Localities/Taupo/

If you did not do that, then do one more submission, and then find additional ways to market your site. A DMOZ listing by itself will not help you. You need many more links from other sites.

I don't know if your site is listable in "Recreation" -- but I'd be fairly surprised if you couldn't create a site that was listable in your home community. If the site tells who you are, what you know, what you'd do for money, how to find you, basically, pretty much anyyhing more than you could fit into a yellow pages ad or business card -- then it's got a good chance of being listable. (Note: we won't be offended if you submit once to a Regional, and once to a Geographic, category! In fact, I'd recommend it.) But that's only one hurdle.

Another hurdle the bobrat -- a fellow ANZie, if I remember correctly -- mentioned is the importance of finding a site. In the global scheme of things, one more FFG is not all that important, and it may be awhile before an editor works on that category. In your hometown, there are a limited number of options, and one FFG is more significant -- it may not be as long before an editor works there. But when all is said, we really don't know when either one will happen -- editors are free agents, and my time is better spent chasing down a few sites in a category important to ME, than in making sure Bobrat reviews a site in a category important to ... um, some third party. (He's rather set in his ways....we let him work where he will, and don't bug him when he's irascible, and we all sleep better and get more work done that way.)

The final hurdle is, once an editor is working in a category, how many sites must he wade through, to get to yours?

(Note: I personally think HTML validation is laudable, but ... if your site is viewable by the browser the editor is using, invalid HTML will NOT be a hurdle. Nor will site appearance be a hurdle -- you're a professional something-else, NOT a professional web designer, and that's OK!)

Lots of sites get reviewed this way: but ... who knows ahead of time which ones they'll be? You can't offer THAT trout to your customers: no more do we offer a review of THAT website on that date.

Make sure your site describes your experience, skills, knowledge; suggest it to your locality category, where it will be more obviously unique: focus on your intended customers and fellow-sportsmen, not on ODP editors, and I'd not worry about the site being rejected when it is (finally!) reviewed.

after I have seen the category edited and my site not having been added, with no feedback as to why, I am lost.

Click to expand...

That a category has been edited does not necessarily mean that all, or any, of the sites waiting for review have been reviewed and added or rejected. If the category description is updated, or a spelling error in a listing corrected, or a listed non-working URL updated to a new functioning one, the "Last edited" date will change. There's a number of other editing tasks that will also cause the category page to update and the date to change. (On the other hand, reviewing and not listing a site does not cause any change to the last updated date, regardless of whether the site was suggested by the public or not.)