I havent been able to get listed for 2.5 years

None of the 3 sites I have repeatedly listed has been entered into dmoz.
I would like to know why that could be and I dont know where to start. I have contacted general email addresses without reply. Now I find this forum I hope I can start to get my sites indexed since 3 years.

So please without naming my sites where should I post details please.

There's no need to post details because we don't discuss specific websites here.

You might have misunderstood our objectives and how we operate here. ODP is a volunteer organisation building a directory as a hobby. Editors edit where they wish, when they wish and as much as they wish within the constraints of their permissions. We have no schedules or systems to force people to do work that they don't volunteer to do. ODP is not primarily a free listing service for website owners and it does not attempt to process their listing suggestions within the time scales desired by them.

Some volunteer will process your listing suggestion in time but we can't predict who or when that might be. Elapsed times can range from a few days to a few years. There is no need to re-suggest your website and doing so could be counter-productive because a later suggestion overwrites any earlier one.

The editors generally want to spend their time on sites that ARE listable, rather than sites which aren't. (After all, that's what helps the directory grow larger and more useful!)

But you can look at your site and see for yourself:

(1) What is there about this site that would make it worth listing? What unique information or insight do I have about this subject, that would make my site worth visiting? Have I made it easy for a visitor to see what information is on this site, and nowhere else on the web?

If you can't give a good answer to those questions, then ... the site should NOT be listed, ever (and your suggesting it repeatedly is spam pure and simple!)

(2) What is there about this SUBJECT that would lead a visitor to think it's not well-served already? Is there a shortage of sites listed already, or is there an imbalance of perspectives?

If there's no obvious answer to THIS question, then ... what's the rush? Editors may well be working on categories that obviously need help--there are certainly plenty of them! And your site may be listed, eventually, but there are, obviously, other important things crying out to be done. (Or, in the worst case: the subject may be so cluttered with pure spam that editor stay away from it in droves...and the golden sites are neglected because there's so much dung piled over them.)

(3) Assuming the subject isn't well served, and the site does fill up a gap in its coverage, now look at the site again. Is it obvious from your suggested description what gap is filled?

If there's an obvious answer to THIS question, your site may be reviewed more quickly than other sites on similar subjects. If not, your site is more likely to wait while other, more promising, sites are reviewed.

There's nothing here you can't do for yourself. Of course, this is mostly descriptive -- you'll understand what's likely to happen. It does give you a little control over what does happen: if you persist in creating sites that target over-spammed subjects, or suggesting to the wrong categories, or writing useless suggested descriptions -- then your suggestions won't help the editors much, and may irritate them. But if you focus on helping the editor find your site when they're LOOKING for just that kind of site, then ... your site is likely to be found sooner.

Remember, there are two issues:

(1) WHEN your site would be REVIEWED. And that depends on chance and surfers' interests. It's not a secret--it's a mystery. We don't know either--any answer we could give would be a pure probabilistic guess. But it certainly COULD be a long time.

(2) WHETHER the site would be LISTED. This isn't a matter of chance: it's based on the ODP guidelines and the editor's informed judgment. If you care anything about the ODP goals, you'll have little trouble reading the ODP guidelines and determining what will happen when the site is eventually reviewed.

Which means -- there's really nothing we can tell you. WHEN? you don't know but neither do we. IF? you know more than we do about the site, so you know more about whether it's listable.

Landed,

We made a couple of attempts to have our company site listed: a professionally-designed site for an engineering firm which provides contract embedded systems development services to aerospace and other industries, as well as a freeze and temperature alarm product which can actually be used over the telephone by hearing-impaired users (the ONLY product of its type that has this feature). We suggested the site to the directory more than three years ago and then again more recently but there has been no response as of yet. I know the site is listable because we're in a number of other relevant industry-related directories that are not exactly easy to get into, and we're on the first page of results for many of the relevant search terms being used by customers searching for a product of this type.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other engineering firms and competing products listed in the directory which are not unique, and more importantly, do not serve the needs of hearing-impaired users.

Since I don't believe that it is the ODP's policy to discriminate against hearing-impaired users, I'm on the forum today to consider whether or not we should file an abuse report but it appears that any "our site isn't listed" reports are basically considered spam, regardless of merit. In this particular case, I would be suspicious that the editor worked for a competitor but there does appear to be more than one competing firm/product listed. So I would be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here and consider that they probably still haven't gotten around to reviewing the site, or the editor who reviewed it lacked the expertise to properly evaluate it.

This is a shame, because it would certainly put the product in front of more people, especially those hearing-impaired users who could really make use of it.

Not to knock the hard work done by the editors here but remember that this directory is staffed by volunteers who do this in their spare time, and may not have the expertise on a particular site's subject matter necessary to properly evaluate it for inclusion, especially if it's a technically-oriented site.

It's obvious that your mileage will vary.

Phil Quesinberry
Q Systems Engineering, Inc.

I have tried to have my site added for a year

Why would DMOZ editors apply to be an editor if they do not have the proper time to do the job? DMOZ is one of the largest directories on the web and it hurts a website's quality score when it is not added. If its against the rules to post the same link more than once how would anyone know what is going on with their original submission when no one ever gets back to you and the link is never up? Getting very frustrated....

>Why would DMOZ editors apply to be an editor if they do not have the proper time to do the job?

That's an extremely silly question. Apparently you think I should NOT volunteer to edit the Elbonian Nose Flute Ensembles category, simply because the current editor in Lower Slobbovian Travel Guides doesn't have time to review site suggestions this quarter? And what if the leading tour guide in Lower Slobbovia is being similarly inhibited, by the lack of experts in Elbonian Nose Flutes? By YOUR standards, nobody would ever do anything--but if that's exactly what's happening to your site, it seems you ought to be happy, not frustrated.

>DMOZ is one of the largest directories on the web

True enough. Which leads to a very important point. If DMOZ, working the way it does, is one of the largest directories on the web, is it a good idea to suggest changes in the way it works?

>and it hurts a website's quality score when it is not added.

Look at it from the other side. Perhaps if a site IS added it HELPS its quality score. But who cares about scores anyway? If you think the quality score doesn't match the actual importance of the site, take that up with whoever creates the score, don't go hassling the volunteers who don't know or care what your score is, or where it came from. (All that matters to us is, what unique content is on the site!)

>If its against the rules to post the same link more than once how would anyone know what is going on with their original submission when no one ever gets back to you and the link is never up?

Precisely because it's against the rules to post the same link more than once, then nobody NEEDS to know what's going on with their original submission, because they aren't going to be making another one anyway, REGARDLESS of what's going on. So there's no need to worry about that information, there's nothing an honest person can do with it anyway.

eknapp415 said:

If its against the rules to post the same link more than once how would anyone know what is going on with their original submission when no one ever gets back to you and the link is never up?

Click to expand...

Just tell us what you would do if you would know the status of your suggestion.

There are 3 possible status
1) It is waiting review : the thing you have to do is nothing, the suggestion is still in the system and one day it will be reviewed
2) It is listed : the thing you have to do is nothing
3) It is rejected : the thing you have to do is nothing, suggesting the site again won't make it listable

So in all cases there is no need to do anything after you suggested a website once. Isn't that nice. You know exactly what you need to do and you have plenty of time to do other things (not related to DMOZ).

This is not a fair system !

>This is not a fair system because the existing sites which have been listed already get an unfair advantage over new sites. In fact since google is using this directory as a reference, waiting a year and 2 basically kills any new competition.

Another issue is who can make sure the judges are not biased? If a judge is working for a company and sees a competition request in front of him, what happens when he decide not to act on it?

Where are the check and balances here? This reminds me of the old soviet block countries. There is no transparency here and always there is an excuse.

Where are the check and balances here?

Click to expand...

Editing logs detailing the actions of all editors are available for every editor to inspect. If there are any signs of abuse, then these concerns can be brought to the attention of the meta editors and the ODP admins appointed by AOL. We have clear guidelines to mitigate any conflicts of interest, and the meta community is keen to see these enforced. At the end of the day, you have to trust AOL as the directory owner to make sure their appointed admins (and the meta editors they in turn appoint) stamp out any corruption.

If you don't believe me, you'll have to become an editor to see how the systems work.

[My original post was accidentally an edit instead of a response. I believe I've restored the original poster's exact language.]

>This is not a fair system because the existing sites which have been listed already get an unfair advantage over new sites.

Fortunately, that doesn't matter to anyone.

>In fact since google is using this directory as a reference, waiting a year and 2 basically kills any new competition.

Who cares about competition? The ODP is about listing sites that HAVE no competition!

This is something that confuses lots of people. But it is not confusing, as long as you think about "unique information on a site."

For instance, suppose John and Richard are both plumbers in Podunk, New Jersey. They may compete with each other. But their websites DON'T compete. John's Plumbing Universe tells everything about what John does for a living, and no other website in the world can speak with authority on THAT subject. Richard's Pipe World tells everything about what RICHARD does for a living, and Richard is the world expert on THAT subject. Both of those sites have no competition. Both have access to information that no other site in the world has. Both can be listed.

>Another issue is who can make sure the judges are not biased?

That's always an issue, we all do the best we can with it. But I'll tell you who SHOULDN'T get a vote -- who should be thrown off of the jury if he even raises the question! That's right, the website owner. That goes for the volunteers -- editors -- who give their own site special treatment, and it goes double for people who haven't even bothered to volunteer for anything, and are only demanding special treatment from someone else.

>If a judge is working for a company and sees a competition request in front of him, what happens when he decide not to act on it?

Why would anyone ask a question like this? If company employee is not even a judge, and doesn't even see the competition request, then what happens when HE decides not to act on it?

Nothing happens, of course!

That's what happens when people decide not to act because they NEVER do anything for anyone else. That's what happens when people decide not to act because they're too busy doing something else for someone else. And that's what happens when people decide not to act because they're dead. It's all the same. Nothing happens when nobody makes it happen.

There's no real difference between what I don't do (after reviewing tens of thousands of sites, and helping prepare thousands of pages of text or music for online publication), what you don't do (after not volunteering for anything), and what Mother Teresa didn't do (after spending years giving poor people food and medicine). What all of us together don't do, doesn't get done.

>Where are the check and balances here?

Every volunteer operates his own balance, and the more he works, the more his balance matters. Every non-volunteer operates his own balance, but since he doesn't do anything, his balance can't possibly matter to anyone else.

Every community has some way of dealing with people whose balance is too different from the community's balance. The old Soviet Union hanged people from lampposts. The new Soviet Union had slave labor camps. Some communities use car bombs for heretics. The ODP ... doesn't let the differently-balanced people help any more.

>This reminds me of the old soviet block countries.

I can sympathize. Sometimes my memory works strangely also.

>There is no transparency here and always there is an excuse.

I'm willing to be transparent about what I do on the web, because I'm proud of it. I'm willing to be especially transparent to the ODP community because I've seen the amount of really good work it has done, and I'm proud to be a part of it. As a result, the community is willing to be transparent to me.

Which is the point. Transparency is a bidirectional phenomenon. If you have ideals someone else might share, be transparent enough about YOUR intentions, and you're welcome to join all the other people who've already been sufficiently transparent about THEIR intentions. And all your actions will be mutually transparent.

Or opaque yourself into a corner--but don't complain about the view. It's really your choice.

Now, nobody should ever care about your own personal promotion plans, but ... if you're ever looking for the important competition, you're welcome to use the directory! No need to thank us, it's a gift. No need to pay us, it's free for all. But that information is not just for you, we give exactly the same gift to everyone on the web, whether we know them or not. How much fairer can you get?

I hope that sounds like "no excuse, no apology." I assure you, none was intended.

Double posted sorry

To be honest I get the feeling that editors on DMOZ are corrupt. i've read countless posting about the editors and I'm starting to believe it.

Here is the latest post I've read about DMOZ editors, kinda makes you go Hmmmmmmmmm....

"After many attempts at getting new sites into DMOZ I eventually became an editor to get some of the sites listed - this is not completely against their rules if the site should qualify anyway, but just goes to show how useless DMOZ really is - and I still wonder why Google seems to still give it credibility (although seemingly less after each update). I'd say from experience become an editor in the section your looking to get listed in first then you can get your site listed without the hassle. Becoming an editor seems an awful lot easier that trying to get quality sites listed."

Thats what happens when you empower everyday people to do the reviews.

I think its fair to say that the editors on DMOZ has become diluted with people looking to accept their own sites

The ODP claims to have had 80,000 editors or so since the beginning. If each of them added their site and dropped out, that would be 80,000 sites. If each of them added 10 sites of their own and dropped out, that would be 400,000 sites.

But what about the OTHER 99% of the listings (or 90% of the listings, depending on just how vicious you imagine these editors to be) Where did THEY come from? I'd hardly call 90+% of the listings being "swamped" by several percent.

It seems to me that you've been hanging around the wrong kind of "people everyday". Because if you were talking about site suggestors, you'd be absolutely right. The spammers definitely provide the large majority of suggestions, and they really do "swamp" the owners of sites with genuinely unique content.

And that rots the soul, no doubt. I'd recommend getting out more, finding the sort of people who're willing to do something good for free everyday ("volunteers").

Don't start with the ODP--you're too hung up, thinking (with your gall bladder) about what you can take the volunteers for. Start with something where you can have no possible personal advantage--so there's no temptation to try to betray the other volunteers and twist it to your advantage. When you get used to the feeling of having done something good, for its own sake, you may be able to come back to a group that MIGHT be twisted for your own advantage -- and not do it.

Some people stay active at the ODP (and other similar collaborative online projects) just because of the community. It's a great feeling, being in a crowd, and not thinking everyone's after your wallet. You'll never get that at a meeting of "everyday sales people"!

I've been reading a lot of the same thing, and I can't figure out whether that's truly the case or if it's mostly "the luck of the draw". I think it might be a bit of both in some cases. It's very clear that having a website/product/service as good as or better than others which are listed in the directory does NOT mean you'll get in, so the "quality site" argument just doesn't seem to hold water.

When I looked at our competitor's websites which are listed here, I figured that we were a shoe-in with our site and our product, which caters to disabled users in addition to the mass-market. There's one thing that bothers me though... we may have screwed up when we originally submitted our website to dmoz many years ago. Since we started out with a home office where all of the engineering and design (but not manufacturing) work was being done, we listed a P.O. box on our site because my wife was concerned about advertising our home address in case some disgruntled customer decided to come by and vandalize the property, etc. Long ago we have since updated the site with our business address and made a few other changes (note that we have not yet had a single disgruntled customer, btw). I'm concerned that someone looked at it (I think I did see traffic from Dmoz one day back then), saw the P.O. Box address and rejected it. I would hope that they would have told us to change that but I don't think that's the way they work here. So with that in mind, perhaps I have to consider that it's our fault before pointing the finger of blame at corruption and they'll get back around to us again in a few more years.

In the meantime, we do have the advantage of being listed in a number of highly-ranked (according to Google) industrial/manufacturer and other industry-related directories, including a couple of recent additions that Google hasn't added to our site profile yet. Still, we'd really like to be listed here too, and think that a listing here would let more people (especially hearing-impaired users), who could really use a product like ours know about it.

If you look around though, you might be surprised at what you can find in the way of free directories that are relevant to your business. Take advantage of them.

- Phil

Rinde said:

To be honest I get the feeling that editors on DMOZ are corrupt. i've read countless posting about the editors and I'm starting to believe it.

Here is the latest post I've read about DMOZ editors, kinda makes you go Hmmmmmmmmm....

"After many attempts at getting new sites into DMOZ I eventually became an editor to get some of the sites listed - this is not completely against their rules if the site should qualify anyway, but just goes to show how useless DMOZ really is - and I still wonder why Google seems to still give it credibility (although seemingly less after each update). I'd say from experience become an editor in the section your looking to get listed in first then you can get your site listed without the hassle. Becoming an editor seems an awful lot easier that trying to get quality sites listed."

Thats what happens when you empower everyday people to do the reviews.

I think its fair to say that the editors on DMOZ has become diluted with people looking to accept their own sites

Click to expand...

To me this doesn't sound like editors are corrupt. For me it shows that some website owners are corrupt. They are so corrupt that they will do everything, including and cheating, to get their website in DMOZ. The real editors of DMOZ try everything to stop these people. Unluckely sometimes one or more manage to cheat tehir way in. But do not dispair. Once caught (and they all will be caught soemday) they will be removed and any harm they have done will be corrected.

Ofcourse when a honest person becomes an editor he is free to list all sites, inlcuding his own, as long as it meets our guidelines.

pquesinb said:

It's very clear that having a website/product/service as good as or better than others which are listed in the directory does NOT mean you'll get in, so the "quality site" argument just doesn't seem to hold water.

Click to expand...

Every website can get listed when it has unique content how good or bad it might be. DMOZ does not judge a website, company or product on something called quality. And do you know why. Because there is not such a thing as a "quality site" or "quality product". What you might find good I might find rubish. Unique content is all we look for.

I'm concerned that someone looked at it (I think I did see traffic from Dmoz one day back then), saw the P.O. Box address and rejected it.

Click to expand...

This certainly is no reason to reject a site.

It's very clear that having a website/product/service as good as or better than others which are listed in the directory does NOT mean you'll get in, so the "quality site" argument just doesn't seem to hold water.

Click to expand...

I think it should be clear (but apparently it's not) that having a website "better than" another site can't possibly help you UNTIL the site is FOUND and REVIEWED. WHATEVER you mean by "quality", we can't POSSIBLY rank UNREVIEWED sites--quality is something that becomes apparent ONLY when a site is reviewed.

It's important to remember that for US, "listable" means "contains significant unique content." Typically, each person in the world is POTENTIALLY unique, as are many GROUPS of people -- such as churches, businesses, clubs, etc. And each person (or distinguishable group) can make a significant website simply by putting enough information about themselves. And that's what makes the site listable.

Everyone likes to have a "good" website, whatever their definition of "good" is. And that's good. Have your ideal, and do your best to live up to it. But when the ODP reviewer comes to the site, he won't be using YOUR ideals, whatever they are. It's our responsibility to judge the site by the ODP criterion: "does this site contain significant unique content?" And if the answer is, "This site, unlike any other, tells customers exactly what John Doe and Company will do for money" -- then the site is listable -- whether or not you've yet achieved your personal quality goals.

Maybe Google is the real problem putting too much wieght on the DMOZ? If people are not being reviewed for years it sounds like the early adopters are benefiting from the importance that Google is putting on DMOZ and there may be far better sites not even being reviewed.

I think it is time for Google to rethink!

hutcheson said:

I think it should be clear (but apparently it's not) that having a website "better than" another site can't possibly help you UNTIL the site is FOUND and REVIEWED. WHATEVER you mean by "quality", we can't POSSIBLY rank UNREVIEWED sites--quality is something that becomes apparent ONLY when a site is reviewed.

It's important to remember that for US, "listable" means "contains significant unique content." Typically, each person in the world is POTENTIALLY unique, as are many GROUPS of people -- such as churches, businesses, clubs, etc. And each person (or distinguishable group) can make a significant website simply by putting enough information about themselves. And that's what makes the site listable.

Everyone likes to have a "good" website, whatever their definition of "good" is. And that's good. Have your ideal, and do your best to live up to it. But when the ODP reviewer comes to the site, he won't be using YOUR ideals, whatever they are. It's our responsibility to judge the site by the ODP criterion: "does this site contain significant unique content?" And if the answer is, "This site, unlike any other, tells customers exactly what John Doe and Company will do for money" -- then the site is listable -- whether or not you've yet achieved your personal quality goals.

Click to expand...

Ok, thanks for clarifying that... that's certainly more detail on the "Dmoz secret sauce" than I've seen before. So unique is important, and you've certainly told us that before. The only problem is, I see at least three different freeze or temperature alarm type product sites in the Directory that basically do the same thing: describe a product that basically does the same thing as the other product sites that are in the Directory. Sure, the sites are all unique in their own way and so are the products they're peddling. Looking further, I see a boatload of engineering consulting sites, and several of them do embedded systems engineering/consulting work for aerospace and other industries.

Now, on to our site as an example... it basically does the same thing as the other three sites: it describes products and services that we offer, looks professional, and is by my reckoning just as "unique" as the other related sites in the directory. I could probably go on to say that our product is more unique than the others in that it's the only one that makes use of standard CallerID-equipped telephones and displays to easily allow an elderly or hearing-impaired user to obtain remote temperature information over the telephone, but admittedly, each related competing product does have its own unique set of features.

So that begs the question, "what makes all of these related websites more unique than ours"? I ask that hypothetically of course, since I certainly do not expect you to comment on a specific website. If you could shed some light on this issue in a more general fashion however, perhaps it could help the rest of us to stop asking silly questions and let you get back to what's important: reviewing more unique web sites.

After reading your detailed post and looking at the sites which are already listed in the directory; I'm left wondering if it's mainly the website that needs to be unique, the product or service, or all of the above. As for having enough information to make the site "significant", "unique", and therefore "listable", how much is enough and how much is too much?

And to clarify since you mentioned it, I'm probably not alone in defining a "good" or "quality" website as one that looks professional, can be easily navigated, and conveys the information, product or service being presented in a clear and concise manner. I would also expect it to be free of ads and affiliate links. I think the ODP deserves nothing less.

Finally, I'm also probably not alone in saying that I appreciate the time you've taken to try and clarify what is considered suitable for the Directory. Thank you.

- Phil

Without knowing how much weight Google places on the ODP, without articulating what "better" means to you, without having any actual evidence of whether that definition matters to anyone else, and furthermore explicitly disclaiming any actual knowledge of whether your "better" sites are available ... you still assume such an opinion could possibly matter? to anyone?

In the face of such vacuity one is almost ashamed to cite evidence. But in my experience, in my web wanderings, whenever I've found a site so rich in unique content that I dropped everything to go list it in the Directory -- whenever that's happened, the site has almost invariably been there.

I deduce, from this sample, that the Directory has done a VERY good job of listing the most important sites, across the board.

Again from my experience (having nothing to do with any sites I've contributed to) based on deep dives into Google search results, I'd say the directory lists a solid majority of the websites of noncommercial organizations. And unquestionably, it lists more personal websites than any other directory.

That leaves the mass spam targets -- "retail" sites (buried in affiliate spam), for-profit 'directories' and 'guides' (i.e. flimsy frames around ad banner farms), and "business" sites (swarmed by affiliate drop-shippers and B2B 'directories'). And here Yahoo has a big advantage over us. They can tell businesses, "if you aren't willing to pay $300 for a fair review and an honest 'no', get lost." And that wards off the cheapskate scum (a very large percentage!) as well as the less stupid affiliate spammers (a smaller percentage), while taxing the stupidity of the rest until they become slightly less stupid. And they'll take money from the stupid, so they don't mind dealing with them.

Without that ward, the ODP categories are swamped by spammers. And make no mistake, People are hurt by spam. Legitimate businesses are hurt--they don't get reviewed because they're buried in spam. Surfers are hurt--they can't find the people who can give the unique service they're trying to buy. Editors are hurt--their valuable time is wasted reviewing sites but not accomplishing anything USEFUL. And Google is hurt--their search results are less useful, and their brand is damaged.

Editors and Google and surfers and workers are all victims. And from this perspective, it's beyond mere malice to try to stir up ill will between the victims. Instead, we all ought to work together to destroy all flavors of the independent-marketing-via-deceptive-webfront industry.