Is there a way to know if your site is banned from being indexed?

Hi, not a complaint, just a question..

I have submitted my site twice over the last 6 months and have never recieved a confirmation of reciept of sumbission and have never had my site listed.

I'm assuming that this is a failure on my part and blame no one but my own ignorance. I'm not a professional webmaster an have spent literally hours and hours at a time just learning how to generate an .xml site map. There is sooo much to learn, and for as much as I learn, I find out there is so much more that I haven't ever even begun to uncover.

Anyway, after reading one of the editors pages I did see that there are sites that are banned, one reason is because off an excess of affiliate links. I do have a page of affiliate links but the site doesn't revolve around it, but wonder if this is a possible cause?

It's not just DMOZ, its pretty much every search engine. I try and try to keep optimizing my site to make it robot friendly, to make it surfer friendly to make it a quality site (just like everyone else anxiously awaiting indexing) but just can't see to get it right as displayed by erroneous pages (of mine) that will appear on the 27th page of google or yahoo and never my index page.

I guess I am grasping at straws at this point because I don't honestly believe that my site or tagging is wrong but wonder if it's my affiliates page... and wondering if there is a list DMOZ has of sites that were rejected or banned?

That was a long winded post lol

Unless you've done something forbidden by the submission guidelines at http://dmoz.org/add.html or your site ist the sort that we don't list anyway, you have nothing to fear. As this forum's FAQ points out, the elapsed time before a suggestion is evaluated can be several years. At that time, if the site is listable it'll either be listed or moved to a better category for further evaluation.

My best advice is to stop fretting about an ODP listing and devote your energies to additional means of promotion. If it's going to be listed within ODP, it'll happen when it happens .

Thanks for your quick response.

I've been reading all of the information on this site and find that my question has been asked over and over again in different phrasing.

The thing is that I have been doing adwords and its just getting too expensive. The other thing is that your site carries alot of weight.

I was told by google and quite a few SEO's that my site will probably never be indexed properly until DMOZ picks it up. OUCH.

.. going back to the waiting line. Sigh, WHAT NUMBER did I select? lol, good thing I wore something comfortable, it looks like I'm going to be here a while.

Good luck everyone!

krayed said:

Thanks for your quick response.
I was told by google and quite a few SEO's that my site will probably never be indexed properly until DMOZ picks it up. OUCH.

Click to expand...

I find it odd that Google would say such a thing. As for the SEO's if they say your success depends on ODP it's time to find a new SEO consultant.

I was told by google and quite a few SEO's that my site will probably never be indexed properly until DMOZ picks it up.

Click to expand...

Total nonsense, I have brand new sites, with no other sites linking to them and not in DMOZ. They were indexed by Google within two weeks.

And if you care about PR - at least one had a PR of 2 within two months. And no other site links to that URL.

(I sure hope you did not pay for any of this advice)

The question is, assuming there were such a ban, what would you do differently?

In other words, after the second site suggestion, assume the site is banned forever from the ODP. Take full responsibility for whatever promotion you think it needs. And act accordingly. If you do this, I guarantee you, 100%: even if your assumption turns out to be wrong, you'll have done the best thing for the site.

krayed said:

I was told by google and quite a few SEO's that my site will probably never be indexed properly until DMOZ picks it up.

Click to expand...

Hard to believe that Google would tell you such a thing, since it isn't true. Are you sure that you weren't reading more than was meant into the advice given? Google suggests that webmasters seek links from other sites. In their webmaster guidelines, they say

Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Click to expand...

That doesn't mean that a link from either Yahoo! or the Open Directory has some special importance in Google's indexing schedule. For more see:
http://resource-zone.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=43713

The information about not being indexed came from:

#1 Tony Moore - Overture (yahoo)
#2 Google adwords customer support
#3 SEO's

Yes, in a way I have paid for this advice! I paid $2500 to overture (yahoo) who maliciously over rode my account settings and exausted my entire advertising funds in 24 hours by advertising my site in their search engine using approximately 6000 keywords that I never agreed to, then refused to even acknowledge my phone call when I phoned to despute the entire scam. I do not recommend using Yahoo for anything.

I have paid google adwords well over $25,000 and had much more success with their service. While speaking with them about optimisation and site placement they have informed me that Google uses several different bots. One is for adwords, another for search submissions... Google bot does not index sites that have not already been indexed by other sites and they tell you that if you want to start getting indexed, to start with DMOZ and then to start contacting other webmasters to exchange links to build the appearance of popularity. Unfortunately the only way to get other LEGITIMATE sites to link to you is by optaining good placement.

#3 SEO's - while I have never paid one, I have consulted them through message boards and e-mail as a prospective client when I was learning about meta tagging and site indexes. The common quote amoung them all is that you have three options: pay-per-click, monthly rentals, and DMOZ. No, not all of the information they have given me (SEO's) is 100% accurate such as h1 tags and B tags will improve your site ranking but when more than one says the same thing, I do tend to listen.

Quite frankly after everything I have learned about "search" engines I am disgusted. The illusion of a free internet has been wiped clear from my eyes. Ok, maybe free internet is not such a good term to use, but I do know that visibility for a small site with little funds or new sites trying to get a start, stand very little chances of having an ounce of presence.

When someone types in a keyword, the only sites that are visible in that search are the ones that have paid the search engine the privaledge of being visible. MSN is the worst of them all, they only cater to big business as displayed by their $7500 minimum deposit for new advertisers wishing to pay for keywords and the $25,000 minumum deposit to be listed in MSN shopping.

DMOZ is the only human indexed search engine and yes, the big 3 do place a major weight on what is happening here.. Do you pay for advertising in the search engines? No? Well, DMOZ is always in the top 1 - 12.

The only way for that to happen in my eyes is to have a site that is as old as the internet, to have every site in the world linking to you or to pay out big bucks to be there.

Small businesses and small sites. We may as well give up now because it just aint happening and there is nothing you can or will say to change that impression in my mind.

As for DMOZ telling everyone that it could take up to 2 years to be listed, well pffft. If that's the case then I suggest you stop taking submissions until you catch up, and remove the false hope you create.

Am I angry? yeah. I've been submitting my site to ALL of the search engines for the last 2 years and have yet to see my index page show up when someone types in a relevent keyword. I found my "about this site" page once. Now that was helpful! I'm so glad I spent so much effort learning about how to get 80% to 100% relevency in my meta tags only to find out that it doesn't matter anyway!

Some of my response may be a bit outside the scope of this forum's intent, but . . .

I have a website that is not, yet, listed in the ODP. It's a commercial site, therefore I am quite certain that it's not the only site awaiting review in that category.

While waiting for a fellow editor to get to the category where I've suggested my site, I have worked diligently on my site - constantly adding content, applying for website awards (I now have 3 'quality' links to my site), and setting up a Google sitemap so that my pages get 'crawled' regularly.

Not all of my pages are indexed (still working on the why of that), but I have PR of 3 to 5 on several pages. I have never paid a dime for SEO advice, adwords, or a directory listing. My site is about 5 months old and is listed in most of the major search engines, because I personally submitted it for review.

A listing in the ODP may well help PR, because it's an external link to your URL. I don't, however, see why it should be anyone's only option, when there are so many other ways to get legitimate links.

(If you are learning HTML, CSS, etc., try searching for a site / forum that does free site reviews. I did, and the information I received helped me tremendously.)

Just my 2cents.

As for DMOZ telling everyone that it could take up to 2 years to be listed, well pffft. If that's the case then I suggest you stop taking submissions until you catch up, and remove the false hope you create.

Click to expand...

A couple of points.

Submissions are but one (and oftenthe poorest) source of sites that we consider for listings.

Editors are under no obligation to review listings -- thus, from our perspective, there is no backlog, jsut a lot of sites that people hope we will eventaully look at. A stong percentage of sites get listed without ever being submitted/suggested. A certain percentage of suggested sites get reviewed independent of the fact they were suggested -- the editor finds the site and decides to review it. In certain parts of the directory, suggested site are reviewed much faster than in others. In others, the wait time for review borders on infinite. Are there sites that have been awaiting a review for more than two years? Yes. More than three? Yes. More than four? Probably.

A large number of editors would probably agree that submissions should be closed, and a certain number would opt to make that permanent -- that that is not going to happen.

The ODP is not the one creating the false hope -- we just happen to be the ones catching the blame. For you, it is all about your site. For us, it is about building a directory. We have different purposes, different priorities and differnet ideas as to what is important.

I'm not sure why you are angry. We never promised to list your site. We never accepted your money in exchange for services. We never said we would review your site on a specific timeline. We are doing, as volunteers, what we want to do in a manner of our own choosing. If that makes you angry, I'm sorry, but I don't see us suddenly doing something we don't want to do (prioritizing sumbissions) simply because there will be fewer angry webmasters.

I would suggest a part of the problem is that this forum exists and provides a place to vent anger.

Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista and the rest provide no such forum, so this place bears the brunt of complaints about all search engines that fail to provide the desired results.

One should also realize that for a particular search term, there may be tens of thousands of other sites who all believe that should rank in the top ten. It's often not a realistic goal.