Spamming DMOZ

I know DMOZ's strict policy about only submitting once.. BUT what if a competitor or even just someone who doesn't like you for some reason decides to spam DMOZ with your website address.

They could make it look legit by only submitting every month or so.

Is there any way that editors would know that this is someone who could be a competitor and not the owner of the website?

Short answer: Yes, and we don't believe it's something that any honest webmaster need be concerned about.

We can't give you a longer answer, I fear. How we discover what is spam and what is not isn't something we are keen to publicise, as you may understand

I figured there would be a way that editors could figure it out. I was just being a little paranoid, i guess, because we just discovered a competitor click frauding us on google ad words.

They can see that the site is submitted over and over again.

This occurs, but it is rare. I have seen it once in five years. It's a dangerous thing to do, because you don't know the line between "helping a site get found" and "irritating the editor to the point where he contacts the WEBMASTER" (not, note well, the dastardly submitter!).

See, your mindset is such that you can't imagine anyone doing anything for non-ulterior motives, and so ... the only reason anyone would submit someone else's site is to nobble them. But the ODP assumption is that ANYONE would submit ANYONE ELSE'S site, just to help us build the directory. So we don't make those assumptions about motive: we just determine whether we are thereby helped -- or not. That frees us from a lot of soul-blighting paranoia.

hutcheson said:

See, your mindset is such that you can't imagine anyone doing anything for non-ulterior motives, and so ... the only reason anyone would submit someone else's site is to nobble them.

Click to expand...

I don't really feel that way, although from my post it might seem that I think anyone submitting someone elses site is doing it for a sinister reason. I know there are people out there who submit a website that is not theirs who feel there is useful and informative content and could be a good addition to DMOZ.

Theres a lot of competition in my field, and one product that we sell is a new revolutionary nutrition that is designed for bariatric (gastric/bypass) patients. We have the lowest price on the internet for it, and a company that has been selling it for a much longer time than us is very irked by this. They have been doing malicious things to harm our business ever since we started selling it.

The reason why I started this post was because I was concerned that they could (although i have absolutely no proof) be submitting our site to DMOZ frequently, making us look like spammers. Thank you for providing me with the answer that editors have ways of knowing if this is the case.

Yeah, this really isn't something to worry about.

The more likely issue (from your viewpoint as a website promotionalizer) is that "competitive industry" means "an ODP category can be comprehensive beyond the usefulness of any surfer WITHOUT listing all possible businesses."

Which means the category is likely to receive less than usual attention from editors, at the same time as it receives more than usual attention from legitimate submitters AND WAY MORE THAN USUAL attention from free-lancing mercenary doorway spammers.

So, the editor will say "I spent ten frustrating hours tracking down several hundred doorway spammers, and didn't find a single useful site to list -- call me a masochistic fool if I visit this category again this decade" while the legitimate submitters are imagining "not a single site was listed today, why is this category so neglected?"

The question as to "which view is correct" simply doesn't arise. There isn't a global answer, and anyone who thinks his is the global answer is simply a megalomaniac and a fascist. Each editor works out his own answer -- some less foolish, others more masochistic -- and the ODP ends up representing the sum of all their priorities. And each webmaster has the right to work out his own priority, on his own site, and on such other promotional sites as he makes arrangements with, so there is no need for the ODP to represent those priorities.

Very well said hutcheson.

I can tell your an integral part of what makes DMOZ great