Yahoo Accepted but DMOZ rejects ...

Hello, I have a site having a little difficulty convincing DMOZ Gods to accept!. However the same site has been accepted by Yahoo directory recently. Any others with same predicament who can share what this dichotomy means and how to go about requesting DMOZ editors to re-consider their decision. Thanks for any help.

It would help if you could provide your URL, so that we can check its progress.

Yahoo and DMOZ have different guidelines surrounding submissions - what Yahoo may accept is sometimes different from what DMOZ accepts, due to the different natures of the directories.

And if it was accepted by Yahoo recently, didn't it cost you a few hundred bucks? Minor detail.

Yes. It did cost $299 for the Yahoo listing. Are you suggesting that we can pay similar amount to ODP so we could get listed?. If so, let me know details.

No, that's not what I meant, just that the situations aren't exactly analogous. You can bet that the $299 fee acts as a wonderful spam filter, while we're wallowing in thousands of submissions that are the equivalent of you submitting your travel reservation service to a travel category for every major state, country, and municipality with an all-caps all-crap description the the effect of "travel reservation, reservations, cheap, low-cost, planes, trains, automobiles, rentals, leases, cruises, clearance, etc, etc." And if they get lucky and two of the 60-odd submissions make it in, they'll just try again a few weeks later.

When the equivalent on Yahoo would cost them somewhere around $18,000 for the first round, I'm betting Yahoo sees a lot less of that sort of thing. I've sure even one $299 fee down the drain for a crappy submission makes submittors seriously re-evaluate a number of things.

Decent submissions are buried in a ton of crap, and that makes it difficult to find them sometimes.

The reason why we have not listed your site is because it violates the Guidelines that editors work to. We do not list sites that consist mostly of affiliate links, since they offer nothing unique to the directory. To quote the guidelines:

"Affiliate links are links to a commercial site that usually, but not always, include an affiliate or referral ID in the URL, such as AffiliateID=19555&ProductID=508. The person whose ID is in the link gets a commission from anyone who buys from the site after following that link. A site that lists affiliate links in addition to other content (such as a fan site for a singer that has interviews and photos and links to buy the singer's CDs) might be an acceptable submission to the directory. Sites that consist primarily of links to buy books or CDs, etc. and/or provide no unique content are not appropriate for inclusion in the directory."

If you wish to be listed, please modify the content of your site.

To say that this site does not contain unique content and does not already add value is not true. On the contrary this site has over 10000 pages of unique content as well as reviews of products (hotels) which DMOZ always failes to see and rejects the site because it contains affiliate links as well

I see your point ... because DMOZ is free it gets a ton of crappy sites and sometimes decent ones don't get the attention that they deserve it. If this is an issue, why does not DMOZ start charging a 1 time review fee to make things better. It does not have be an annual fee like Yahoo or as high as $299. But make a decent $50 and I am sure that will help a lot of crappy submissions to be kept in check!

We've clamored for a number of software enhancements to help filter spam, but we haven't considered that one... Really, it'd be difficult to justify a fee for commercial sites, and impossible for non-commercial sites. It just doesn't mesh with the open aspect of dmoz.

In reality, that could be one on the greater long-term problems with the ODP. It's tougher to find good, non-self-interested editors for commercial categories than it is for stuff like video games, hobbies, arts, science, regional, etc. Unsurprisingly the ODP has a much higher percentage of its sites listed in non-commercial categories than Yahoo. With paid inclusion will the relevance of the Yahoo commercial listings increase, while the other categories wither? And vice versa for the ODP?

I tend to think the ODP will be able to do both for free, but that Yahoo and Looksmart will be catering more to the SEOs than the searchers.

On the other hand, the ODP's Adult directory is much, much larger than Yahoo's. Not sure how that fits into the equation.

stevesilva, thanks for sharing your insights. I have noticed that some categories in ODP are dominated by editors with self-interest and getting new quality sites listed there is next to impossible. see how few sites are listed in ODP for travel categories compared to yahoo. also, in some categories like "travel", it is based on selling goods for "commissions" (everyone must have heard of travel agents). and in such categories, rejecting sites based on "containing affiliate links" does not make sense unless all ODP wants is one or two players like Sabre for the entire category as eventually all the travel booking is done through a few centralized booking systems like Sabre.

We realize that there are self-serving editors, but when we learn of them, as we have in several hundred instances, they are removed.

I'm personally not that familiar with the affiliate policies, beyond knowing that perhaps the first impetus of about three years ago was bookstore affiliate links... a category with a few hundred sites all offering links to Amazon.com didn't offer anyone any more value than a single Amazon.com link or deeplink.

>>I have noticed that some categories in ODP are dominated by editors with self-interest and getting new quality sites listed there is next to impossible.<<

Oh really? Send me the details: editor names, category names and sites which have been refused listings.

>>Oh really? Send me the details: editor names, category names and sites which have been refused listings.<<
That is my take on it. That said I should have added that there are several great editors there as stevesilva mentioned I saw several editors removed/changed as well as their "listings" removed in the last 6 months. The categories I am generally referring to are under Recreatiion --> Travel. Pls let me know how I can e-mail you so I could send my sites that have unique content (10000s of pages) although they do have affiliate links. I would appreciate your comments on them and any help to get them added. Thanks.

Click on the editors name, and you will see an email address in their profile. There is also a send private message at the bottom of the profile.

[way off topic for this thread]

ODP Social Contract

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr><p>why does not DMOZ start charging a 1 time review fee to make things better.<p><hr></blockquote>
You may want to read the ODP Social Contract which states, among other things:
<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr><p>1. The Open Directory Will Remain 100% Free
We promise to keep the distribution of ODP data, and the submission process to this data, entirely free.<p><hr></blockquote>

I haven't looked into this issue in detail, but a lot of our travel-related stuff is actually listed in the Regional tree in the area to which it is most appropriate. So I think it's difficult to make blanket statements like that.