ODP vs. Traditional SEs

In this world of Google, where one could be forgiven for believing that Google is the be-all and end-all of search, I wonder...

Has the external submission rate for ODP increased, decreased, or remained at a steady rate over, say, the past three years? I would imagine it's done down, but I'm just curious whether people are still seeing DMOZ as an important arena in which to position themselves?

That is not a number we monitor, so everything we could say would be based on speculation. We can see the total number of sites waiting for review, bnut that number consists of:

- externally suggested sites
- sites added to the unreviewed pool by editors
- sited which have already been listed that await a second evaulation due to malfunction, need for recheck, moves to a different category, ...
- public update requests

In the end this number is not of a big use and does not say anything about the amount of external site suggestions.

You have to remember, always, that our mission is to index the sum of human knowledge on the internet. That includes (without prejudice) sites that have never been suggested by anyone; and it excludes the vast majority of suggested sites. So the INTERESTING question is: what is the rate at which new listable sites are being published?

We can't answer that either. But at least we wish we could.