Our site not being listed after 2 years.

I've submitted my site once every 12 months for the last two years. It seems like the category may be edited by our competitor due to the addition of their newer sites in multiple categories.

We've been online for 4 years with a decent PageRank of 4. Our competitor online for one year and has two dmoz listings in categories to the same URL, along with their affiliate sites.

How can we get a fair listing, even if it's just one category?

Thanks,

It's amazing how often folks are convinced that a competitor is keeping their website out of our directory when the reason (if it's a listable website) is much more likely to be a mismatch between their expectations and our resources.

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.

When editors are working in a category, they don't necessarily process listing suggestions in date order, age or by PR (which we ignore). Many of us do cherry pick though and focus first on the ones that have made some attempt to write guidelines complaint titles and descriptions.

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.

Finally, if you have evidence of editorial corruption, by all means visit the category concerned and use the report abuse/spam link at top right to provide full information. A vague feeling of paranoia without any facts isn't adequate.

Thanks for your fast support.

I never stated being convinced of anything. I'm fully aware of the ODP and similar volunteer type websites and services on the net.

What my question was: "How can we get a fair listing, even if it's just one category?"

The turn around time for a reply to my thread was VERY fast and also volunteer I'm sure. Correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks for that, either way. With the internet and the number of willing volunteers these days, volunteer-powered is more of a great asset than an excuse.

How can we get a fair listing, even if it's just one category?

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By suggesting your website - which you've done. There's no legitimate way of expediting its evaluation. You seem to be hoping that this thread will lead to that but it will have no effect whatsoever - either way.

Now that is fair. It wouldn't be good to give you what you perceive to be an advantage merely because you've found this forum .

If you think its unfair that your competitor is listed and you are not, I'm afraid that's just another aspect of life which is inherently unfairly governed by chance.

If you see a pattern of "related sites" being listed, please report that as a quality issue. (Whether it turns out to be abuse or not, doesn't matter--we want to resolve the quality issue.)

Getting Listed Is An Honor

I wouldn't want senior editors to think that when we ask how or why that we are insulting them on getting listed. Its a desire to be one of the lucky that get listed. Its been over a year as well for our website and we are still not listed. I respect the fact that this is a serious human edited directory. Do I hope to gain incite from DMOZ in how to expedite that listing...absolutely..If there is no onsite..then so be it ...we move on and hope for the best.

Do nothing accomplish everything

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> Its a desire to be one of the lucky that get listed.
Getting listed has nothing to do with luck. Only a website with enough unique content will do the trick.

> in how to expedite that listing
There is no way to expedite a listing

For a website selling products the uniqueness comes from
- the company that runs the site ; who are you
- the products that are for sale ; what do you do for a living
If it is nit you (the company) selling the products there is no unique content (those are called affiliates, dropshippers, mirrors - chose a term depening on the way the products are sold)

>Now I am confused, what is considered unique content?

What's "considered" unique is what IS unique.

>My site was created in 2000 which out dates most listings in my category

That's just one of many things that a reviewer will not attempt to evaluate, because it is not ever relevant to whether a site is listed.

>I sell a product line that is unique in itself.

Usually the manufacturer is the best (most authoritative) source for information about its product lines. So we'd certainly want to list the manufacturer's website.

When reviewing retailers' sites, we'd pretty much ignore information about the product that can come (more authoritatively!) from the manufacturer. A retail site isn't KEPT from being listed because it has information about the product--it just doesn't HELP it get listed, because that's not UNIQUE information.

All websites are personal. The uniqueness in your website is from you--basically, it's what you know, what you've done, what happened to you, what you'd do for money.

I do not mean to sound condescending or rude but this gets more interesting as I hear more.

hutcheson said:

>What's "considered" unique is what IS unique.

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There is so little on the internet that is unique and this word can be used anyway wanted. The meaning of the word "unique" is being the only one, being without a like or equal or unusual. Now be honest with me on this one

hutcheson said:

>Usually the manufacturer is the best (most authoritative) source for information about its product lines. So we'd certainly want to list the manufacturer's website.

When reviewing retailers' sites, we'd pretty much ignore information about the product that can come (more authoritatively!) from the manufacturer. A retail site isn't KEPT from being listed because it has information about the product--it just doesn't HELP it get listed, because that's not UNIQUE information.

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I am sorry but this is making little sense to me, I was wanting to know why we are talking about years to get listed, in this case since creation of DMOZ but I am giving the benefit of the doubt of two years. I know of people being blacklisted for some of the sillies reason when there are true spammers. The above has little or nothing to do with a site getting listed.

hutcheson said:

>All websites are personal. The uniqueness in your website is from you--basically, it's what you know, what you've done, what happened to you, what you'd do for money.

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Then why is uniqueness an issue? Again I am not trying to be condescending or rude but I am not some young kid and I appreciate straight talk. Some on hear do but other seem to filling in spare time and feel they need to answer.

jybw said:

There is so little on the internet that is unique and this word can be used anyway wanted. The meaning of the word "unique" is being the only one, being without a like or equal or unusual. Now be honest with me on this one

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Yes, there is a lot non-unique on the internet. And those sites will not be listed on DMOZ.
But luckely there is also a lot of unique content to be found on many websites. And they will be listed. We just don't know when that will happen.

Every real company that created a website on which it describes who the company is and what it does will most probably have unique content.

But there are a lot that only pretend to do something. In reality they are only sending a customers request to another company to fullfil that request. Those don't have unique content. In such a case we will list the other company. Send our visitors directly to the source.

I am sorry but this is making little sense to me, I was wanting to know why we are talking about years to get listed,

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That is caused by the way DMOZ has chosen to operate. We are all volunteers who only work as much as we personaly want and in the parts of DMOZ we prefer. This can result in some parts of DMOZ not being looked at for several months and sometimes years. If noone (either inside or outside DMOZ) is interested in 'working' in a certain category nothing will happen in that category.

I know of people being blacklisted for some of the sillies reason when there are true spammers.

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And how do you know about people being blacklisted. Or doe you (or those people) only think they are blackilsted.

>There is so little on the internet that is unique...

That statement simply _will_ not be believed in this venue. Our experience says otherwise. I've posted unique material, and I know tens of thousands of other people who have. If you're not seeing unique material, you're looking in the wrong places, or not recognizing uniqueness when you find it.

>and this word can be used anyway wanted.

When you want to be understood, you have to use it only in the conventional sense.

>Why is uniqueness an issue?

Uniqueness isn't _an_ issue. It's THE issue. Computers are perfect copying machines. The web is simply a distributed copying machine. But you have to find what you want, to be able to copy it.

So a directory is a way of finding things you might want to copy (for your own archives, or just to read and dump.)

Now, since computers are such good copying machines, there may already be multiple copies of what you want. They're all exactly alike, none unique, right?

Wrong. One instance is by a real person. It's the original, and only one can be original. The original is about what the real person knows, what he's done, what he'd do for money. It's unique because nobody else knows the same thing and does the same thing for money. It's authoritative because nobody else CAN know exactly what he'll do for money--and that makes HIS original version unique. HE can change it, every time he changes his mind about how much money he wants, or how much he'll do, and his new version supersedes all copies, whether or not THEY are ever updated.

And all the other copies ... are just copies. There's nothing unique about them.

That's how content is unique, no matter how many copies of it exist.

So anyone can create a unique website, by taking advantage of his inherent personal uniqueness. And, of course, anyone can create a website by plagiarizing content from other sites. There are tens of millions of spamvertising doorways that exist only to drive content to another site. The only thing those website owners have to say is, "If so-and-so does something for you for money, I want some of that money." Unfortunately, that's information nobody cares about.