What is the longest anyone has waited?

I am just curious what the longest someone has waited with success of being registered. I understand I have no control, but I am a pretty simple regional category and I have not been accepted. My submission was moved to a new category for review in December of 2004. Am I doing the right thing by continuing to wait? I hope so; I look forward to being listed.

Respectfully,

Justin

We don't do statistics about waiting times, because that's a measure with no relevance to the ODP. But we do know that in some branches, suggestions wait for several years until an editor checks them.

Am I doing the right thing by continuing to wait?

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Yes and no. "Yes" because there is nothing else you can do. "No" because you should not waste your time waiting. Go on with other tasks, don't spend your time waiting for something you can't influence.

Eight years

The ODP went live on 5th June 1998 (though not under that name), so the longest wait must be less than eight years. This is not the best possible upper bound.

jdaw1 said:

The ODP went live on 5th June 1998 (though not under that name), so the longest wait must be less than eight years.

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I think it is safe to presume that at least one site was suggested in 1998 that was not listable, and thus was deleted from the suggestion queue. If the site owner has not improved the content, and the site owner continues to "wait", then they will wait forever. This demonstrates the pointlessness of waiting that windharp mentioned.

Purdue, as a webmaster, I suggest you keep improving your site, making it the most useful source of interesting information that you can. When an editor or customer next looks at your site, they will be amazed!

Actually back in 1998 there were very few submissions, I believe. At that stage volunteers were building the directory mainly by pooling their own bookmarks. When I joined in 1999, I built up categories entirely by listing sites I had found myself. (And to this day submissions are few and far between in my favourite categories, which are all non-commercial.)

As clones of the directory spread (Lycos, AOL, Google) the number of submissions naturally rose. But I suspect that in 1999 the only ones which were not reviewed were those in languages for which we did not have an editor. But we've acquired editors since then for a staggering number of languages. So I doubt if anyone now is going to come across an unreviewed submission from that far back.

But in certain areas of the directory, it's quite possible to find them from two or three years back.

Hello,

I think I submitted one of my web site to ODP in 2001 or 2002. The web site is a common web site - domain name registration and web hosting but with a lot of domain name and web hosting knowledge.

The web site is still not listed up to this moment. Since I have no any idea if my web site was rejected or not, I just let it waiting.....

So my suggestion: if your web site has not been listed in one or two years, don't worry about that. ODP listing is just an appetizer in SEO.

So my suggestion: if your web site has not been listed in one or two years, don't worry about that. ODP listing is just an appetizer in SEO.

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I’d agree. One cannot and should not rely on the ODP as a Holy Grail. Throw it in and after 3 to 6 months maybe think about submitting it again. But go on about your business as though it did not exist at all.

My wait is not that much, its 7 to 8 months . I also doubt our competitor is an editor of that category and we may never get listed lol.,

jdaw1 said:

The ODP went live on 5th June 1998 (though not under that name), so the longest wait must be less than eight years.

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No, it's got to be longer than that. There have been web sites for more than ten years, and some of the earliest ones no doubt remain unlisted.

The date a site was first published with content provides a much more valid metric than the date somebody happened to suggest that we include it. We list many sites that have never been suggested, but we hardly ever list one that's never existed.

ahmad, the editor is not a competitor of yours, but space aliens have warned him not to list your site. Sorry, but we have to follow the voices in our heads, or the pain is intolerable?