Is It True About Dmoz?

I read in the ebook of a marketing expert that Dmoz is the most important search engine to submit to (no matter if you call yourselves a project) and that if a site is submitted here, it will eventually be picked up by all other search engines. Is that true?
Thanks!

OK, you've learned something. You can add another name to your personal list of gormless gurus: either me or your e-text author (I don't care which).

DMOZ (the cognosceti generally call it the ODP, for "Open Directory Project") isn't a search engine. It never was a search engine, and it is highly unlikely that it ever will be a search engine. It is, as its name suggests, a directory. (The site indeed possesses a site search, which is a hack of a free-software search tool that possesses no concept of rank, relevance, stemming, any kind of semantic tools, boolean search phrases, or ... anything that you'd normally look for in a search engine. It helps us place sites, and if it does something else good for someone, we won't begrudge it.)

Some real search engines pick stuff up from the ODP. Google does a pretty good job; some others don't do so well. We don't mind: we tend to think human-edited link lists are an important contribution to search engine quality, but the Search engineers are entitled to their own opinion.

There are two little bits about the ODP that your guru should have mentioned.

One is: The ODP doesn't list all sites. It is selective; many sites that most desperately need promotion aren't listed at all.

Another is that the editors are volunteers who work on what they consider most important: which is seldom what commercial webmasters want. A site may wait an indefinite period of time for a review; and the webmaster really has no estimate of, or control over, how long that will be.

So depending on the ODP as a site promotion strategy is asking for failure: at the very best, it will do nothing for you that it wouldn't happily do for all your competitors!

But, considering the expense of an ODP submittal (a few minutes to find the best category, and another few minutes to submit the site), it is probably about the first thing you should do for a site you want to promote.

And then...(this is the important bit) forget it! Go on about your promotional schemes or ruses as best you can. Assume that the ODP will never list your site so long as you need a listing. But the moment your site is established and has no more need of promotion, some editor is liable to think, "The ODP can not for a moment longer be considered comprehensive without listing this very site" -- and list it.

So: how important is it? Important enough to submit to. Not important to depend on for commercial promotion. Not important enough to worry about.

Practically speaking, I think that's about all that matters.

hutcheson said:

how important is it? Important enough to submit to. Not important to depend on for commercial promotion. Not important enough to worry about.

Click to expand...

For many of us (commercial site owners) ODP is actually quite important. I'm not trying to take up an argument, but rather, just trying to help a general understanding.

I know that the ODP serves a higher cause, but Google has created a bit of a problem for us. I assume you know that in order to achieve a decent position on Google Results Pages, a website will need lots of links to it. But for the small company just starting up, getting links is quite difficult.

Most of us don’t have the money to pay for optimization and submission, so we do it ourselves. We fight for every link we can get, we improve our content, and then we fight for more links. There are lots of scams in the quest for links, ranging from directories that require reciprocal links then don’t list yours, to link farms that may get you banned forever.

Chances are, your competitors’ sites have been around a while and already have lots of links. Chances are, they are in ODP. Lots of startup companies are run by ‘Average Joe or Joanne’ often financed on a second mortgage.

So what does the ODP bring to a commercial startup? It brings a listing in literally 50 – 75 directories that are routinely crawled by Google, and which count toward a site’s PageRank. In the never ending battle for position, these links from sites that don’t do much more than simply display ODP listings can be very important.

Most startups will have to pay for inclusion at first, and probably for clicks as well. The PPC services will drain your credit card in a heartbeat. During this critical period when money is drying up and customers are few and far between, the startup is anxiously awaiting a little relief. An ODP listing can bring some. (maybe not a lot, but some)

I know that none of this is the ODP’s problem. However, you provided good insight into an editor’s world in another thread, and I truly appreciated the peek. I just though I’d try to bring some insight to the issue of why so many new companies put so much importance on ODP.

long,

That's the problem. On one hand you have editors trying to build a useful directory. On the other you have site owners that see ODP as some sort of promotion vehicle.

For some reason, people refuse to see ODP for what it is and instead try to insist it be something it is not. For many it's not a malicious thing, but they just don't 'get it'.

So what does the ODP bring to a commercial startup?

Click to expand...

I kindly respond: ODP brings information to a startup. You can research your industry, your competition, and your customers. You can research advertising and promotion trends and avenues. You can research issues directly related to small businesses. You can even find industry specific associations and opportunities to network with other businesses. It brings a lot to anyone who uses it.

I'm really sympathetic to how tough it can be for start-up companies. However, I think the belief that the ODP can solve or even ease their woes has them barking up the wrong tree, wasting some of their already overtaxed time and energy. The fact that this isn't our goal aside, the practical fact is: if there are already many competitors in Joe Start-Up's field, the ODP listing isn't going to be able to help him. Only ten websites get on the first page of Google. Even if ODP listings made a big difference to Google (something I think is usually overvalued), we have more than ten websites already listed in most commercial categories. In many cases we have more than 100. Adding Joe Start-Up's couldn't possibly do anything to elevate his site's Google ranking over those more-established sites that have been working on their links longer.

I clear out dead websites from the ODP on a weekly basis. Obviously the fact that they got an ODP listing didn't keep them in business. If I were you, I wouldn't assume it would keep you in business either. I'm sure a free link from a good source (like DMOZ) can only help a website, but if you're looking to it as anything more than icing on your virtual cake, I think your strategy is flawed.

dajeffster said:

On one hand you have editors trying to build a useful directory. On the other you have site owners that see ODP as some sort of promotion vehicle.

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Noted and agreed.

I can't image the stuff that editors have to deal with on the commercial side. My only request is that all commercial site owners not be perceived as one big group. I think you've got some decent people who follow the rules, and hope that one day they'll get their site listed. In the mean time, they move on to doing all of the other things necessary for marketing and promotion.

Granted, you do have many 'commercials' who don't get it and never will, regardless of how many times you answer the same question for them. You also have the professional spammers as hutcheson pointed out in another thread. I don't know how editors put up with these two groups. I couldn't.

Unfortunately, there's no solution in sight for the problem as stated above.

flicker said:

if there are already many competitors in Joe Start-Up's field, the ODP listing isn't going to be able to help him.

Click to expand...

Also noted and agreed.

Your statement is the reality. The issue however, is one of perception, and misinformation. Anyone who sets out to learn how to promote their own website is guaranteed to run across a statement somewhere on the web that goes something like: "getting into the ODP is the single most important thing you can do...."

Of course that's usually followed by the statement: "over loading your metatags is the single most important thing you can do" which is often followed by "writing tons of content, whether your visitors want it or not, is the single most important thing you can do".

It's the misinformation out there that is creating the expectation. And so editors spend way to much time re-educating.

Now, if I only had a solution.... :0)

Figuring out what you do, and doing it well, is the most important thing you can do....