How to Get Listed in the DMOZ Directory
I'm a little confused. As an internet consultant specializing in search engine optimization, I believe that it is a good idea to submit your site to DMOZ (a.k.a. ODP or the Open Directory Project) --in fact, Google even encourages you to do so! However, being an ODP editor myself, I can tell you from personal experience that perhaps only 10-20% of all the site suggestions we receive actually follow our guidelines...
This is a pity, not only because it wastes the time of the ODP's volunteer editors, but also because it severely reduces the odds of your site being listed within a reasonable amount of time! So, for the benefit of all Workers of the Web, this article will show you how to suggest your site the right way. I will walk you through the Guidelines and point out things that typically go wrong.
Is your site listable?
The first step would be to determine if your site is listable at all, since certain sites will simply not be listed. This not only includes sites with illegal content (e.g., material that infringes copyrights or other intellectual property rights), but also sites that contain little or no original content (e.g., sites consisting mainly of affiliate links, advertisements, and articles that are being syndicated across the Internet).
Keep in mind that the ODP is not a listing service for webmasters; instead, we try to include and describe sites that are valuable resources for end users. If your site contains a lot of unique, useful information, it is probably a good candidate for inclusion; but if it doesn't, it is not.
Is your site already listed?
It is a good idea to search for your domain (without the "www") from the ODP home page before you start the site suggestion process.
If you find that the site is listed, but not the way you would like it to be, do not suggest your site again. Instead, use the "update listing" link at the top of the page where your site is listed. Keep in mind, however, that there has to be a good reason for a listing to be updated; e.g., the listing contains typos, or is factually incorrect. A webmaster's natural desire to add keywords or marketing hype to the title or description is not considered a good reason!
What is the single best category for your site?
If I had to name the one mistake that causes the most delays, this would be it: not selecting the "correct" category. The first criterion we use to determine where a site should be listed is its language.
If your site is not written in English, you should suggest it to the appropriate category under World. For example, a site in Dutch should be suggested to the appropriate subcategory of World/Nederlands; however, a site about the Netherlands written in English should be suggested somewhere in Regional/Europe/Netherlands!
Next, you should "drill down" to the most specific subcategory for your site. In other words, if you have a domain name appraisal service, you should not suggest it under Computers/Internet (let alone Computers!) or even Computers/Internet/Domain_Names but instead you should go to Computers/Internet/Domain_Names/For_Sale_or_Auction/Appraisal.
Now, if you go to the "correct" category in my example, you may notice the line near the bottom of the page that reads: "Volunteer to edit this category." As a result, you may believe that this category "has no editor" and decide to suggest your site instead to a "higher" category that does have one or more "named" editors. (In my example, the first category with named editors would be Computers/Internet at the time of writing.)
It is important to realize that this would be wrong. No category is ever "without an editor." The editors listed under Computers/Internet can edit not only in that category, but in every underlying category as well, including Computers/Internet/Domain_Names/For_Sale_or_Auction/Appraisal! Also, there are editors with special privileges ("Editall") who can edit anywhere in the directory.
If you suggest your site to an inappropriate category, this is what will probably happen. Your suggestion will wait in a queue until an editor decides to review it. (Since the ODP gets lots of suggestions, this can take anywhere from a few days to several months or even years.) The editor will notice that the site has been suggested to an inappropriate category, and do one of two things. If the category is completely off, the editor may decide to treat the suggestion as spam and simply delete it. However, if you are lucky, the editor will "forward" the suggestion to the appropriate category --the one where you should have suggested your site in the first place! If you had suggested it there yourself, your site might well have been listed by now; but instead, it will have to wait all over again for an editor to review it...
What should your suggestion look like?
Once you have identified the best category, the suggestion process becomes rather straightforward. A site suggestion consists of three elements: the URL, the title, and the description.
For the URL, enter the shortest version that points to the home page of your site, e.g., http://www.dmoz.org/ or http://dmoz.org/ --normally, you should not submit a "deep link", and you should not include a file name (e.g., index.html).
For the title, enter the official name of your site. Do not add things like "Welcome to", "Home page of", or other information that isn't part of the official name.
Finally, for the description, enter a short, objective, well-written text. Do not repeat the title in your description, do not use words like "I", "we", or "us", and do not include marketing hype. Also, be sure to write your description in the appropriate language for the part of the directory where you are suggesting your site --e.g., Dutch if you are suggesting your site to World/Nederlands, but English if you are suggesting it to Regional/Europe/Netherlands.
By creating a "perfect" site suggestion, you will make the editors' job much easier. When they get round to reviewing your site, they won't have to rewrite everything from scratch; instead, they will be able to "accept" your suggestion as submitted.
What happens next?
When you have filled out the site suggestion form and press the "Submit" button, you should get an on-screen confirmation that tells you that your suggestion has been received. You will not receive any further messages from ODP. In other words, you won't receive a "rejection notice" if an editor decides that your site is not listable; but if your site is listed, you won't be notified, either.
Think of the process as "submit and forget" --once you have suggested your site, there is nothing else you can do, either to "speed things up" or to inquire about the "status" of your suggestion. (In the past, you could ask for a "status check" at the Resource Zone, but at the time of writing, that facility no longer exists; also, you should not contact individual editors about your site suggestion.)
If you follow the steps in this article, your site suggestion will be much better than most, and you will avoid any unnecessary delays!
Comments
Still frustrated
I really try to follow the guidelines. I'm not trying to "beat the system". I'm just trying to get some fellow small business people listed.
My most recent site is a real estate company in rural Virginia. Should I suggest this under the town? The county? The state? Legally they can sell anywhere in Virginia but I think the county is the most appropriate. Is my thinking correct?
Thanks for any help, anyone?
Good question!
Ken: your question reminded me of an important issue that I probably should have addressed in the article, but I will mention it here.
Some categories have special Guidelines, and Real Estate is one of them. According to the category description for Business/Real_Estate, "[a]ll local and regional real estate agents and agencies are listed in the Regional branch according to the city or town where their office is located. This is discussed further in the real estate guidelines."
So the correct category for the site in your example is, in fact, the town where the company is located --more specifically, the Business_and_Economy/Real_Estate/ subcategory within that town, if there is one!
Good info
I will browse the guidelines for more tips on other clients sites and see if I did something wrong there.
One other question: in the instructions for suggesting a site, there are warnings about multiple submission of the same site. If I re-submit sites I submitted weeks, months or years ago, will I be flagged as abusive? What allowance is given for people like me just trying to get it right?
Multiple submissions
If you had suggested a listable site in the appropriate category originally, it is extremely unlikely IMO that you will be flagged as "abusive" if you re-submit after six months.
If your old suggestion was still waiting in the queue for that category, it will simply be overwritten by the new one; and if an editor chooses to view a queue ordered by date (there are other possibilities), the new suggestion will simply be further down the queue --that's why I wrote that you should normally "submit and forget."
However, we had a serious hardware problem last year, and as a result, we lost a number of site suggestions. Because of these very exceptional circumstances, it may be worthwhile to re-submit --once!-- if you originally suggested the site earlier than September, 2006 (IIRC).
On the other hand, people submitting unlistable sites again and again (which will be deleted by editors every time), or to a variety of (unrelated) categories, or once every few days (unfortunately, I'm not making this up...) will definitely be considered abusive!
Another tricky one
One of my clients is a musician/songwriter. You can see his site at paulcasemusic.com. I suggested it to DMOZ in late 2005. I believe I re-submited once several months later. It has not been listed. (Nothing I have ever suggested in over 2 years has been listed - 5 sites)
The category I suggested in was Top: Arts: Music: Bands and Artists: C. I have read through the Editing Guidelines and saw nothing in particular about this category. Is there a different category I should have used? He lives in Upstate New York but plays there and in the Florida Keys and Illinois at times. Because he plays in resort areas, he has fans all over. I don't think a regional category would be appropriate. Besides, in looking at the listings under Regional or even Styles, they all seem to have @links back to the alphabetically listings under Top: Arts: Music: Bands and Artists.
Any help would be appreciated.
Regional / Topical
Ken: while I genuinely do like to help people, I've learned the hard way that it is a bad idea for ODP editors to comment on specific sites...
However, your question does touch upon another issue that I could have mentioned in the article: the distinction between Topical and Regional categories.
ODP organizes sites both "by activity", in Topical categories such as Computers/Internet/Domain_Names/For_Sale_or_Auction/Appraisal, and "by location", in Regional categories such as Regional/North_America/United_States/New_York/Localities/H/Holland/
Some sites can be listed twice: both in a Regional and in a Topical category, while other sites will only be listed in one of the two (e.g., a local real estate agent will only be listed in Regional).
In Regional, companies will be listed under the locality where their office is physically located, and not under the (potentially much larger) geographical area that they serve.
So, without commenting on the specific example, I can tell you that it is often worthwhile to investigate the possibility of suggesting a site both in Topical and in Regional! --If you have clearly made an effort to find the appropriate categories, and the Guidelines do not state that you may only submit to one of the two, this will not be viewed as spam, in my experience.
great tips
I've stopped recommending DMOZ...
Another point
My experience says that
--
GiorgosK
web design/development
Agree with Giorgio above
Also frustrated
Hi marcel, everybody,
I'm also a bit frustrated. I've suggested several sites on DMOZ in the last couple years. Only one got listed.
After the first "rejection" (8 months of waiting and not being listed) I spend several hours reading carefully the submition guidelines and tried again. no luck.
I honestly feel a bit frustrated that there are no explanations nor notification about the acceptance or rejection of your suggestion. I can see that this method is probably for minimizing abusive suggestions, but I think there is a lot of well intended people trying to get their services and info out there, and the method is not treating them right.
just as an example, a year and a half (if I recall correctly) I suggested a friend's site, thetoypoodle.com. it's a message board for toy poodle dogs fans, quite informative and a good tips resource for new owners, it was not listed, I've resubmitted a month ago, have no hope anymore. I did spend some hours choosing the correct category, spend even more time redacting the description and used the website official title for the title, no deep linking, just the url... I just don't know what is that I do wrong, and DMOZ does not help me get the info right.
If the goal is to get the best websites to the people, then I think it's not a bad idea to give some feedback on what we are doing wrong, isn't it, how abusive can a suggestion of a toy poodle site be? :D
Anyway, I'm taking the humor as an ally now... :P
Best, Bobby
A few comments
GiorgosK: it is difficult for "outsiders" to know exactly what is happening in a specific category, but it should be good to know that individual editors cannot "block" suggestions --there are always other editors who can edit in a category (e.g., Editalls), and if editors delete a suggestion, they have to give an explicit reason (which can be seen by other editors)!
Dugu: if you inquired about the status of your suggestion at the Resource Zone, please note that editors stopped doing "status checks" at that forum, so the best you could hope for were general ("default") guidelines...
Robberto: in an earlier comment, I mentioned last year's hardware crash which caused some data loss. Therefore I would simply assume that your most recent suggestion (submitted a month ago) is currently waiting for review!
DMOZ Database Gets Mirrored on SPAM Site! Is this Bad?
Buddy
Houston / Katy TX Web Design & SEO
DMOZ
Very Nice TIP
DMOZ is a pathetic excuse
DMOZ is a pathetic excuse for an "authority" directory.
Hundreds of categories go unedited for years on end, SPAM and broken links dominate some of the major categories, and links can meet every submission guideline and still get refused because the editors are either biased and/or lazy. Highly qualified editors are commonly denied for categories that have been dormant for literally years, on the grounds that they have too many editors for the category!
Personally I'm tired of hearing all of the excuses from DMOZ owners and editors. Your directory sucks, guys. Please roll over and die, and let someone who can actually handle the job take over.
If someone else could have
Nice Article
DMOZ - Overrated
Can you cancel a DMOZ submission?
Resubmit
If the site is changing domains, re-submit the old URL with a description of "site redirects to www.newdomain.com". The old suggestion will be over-written with your new suggestion for the old URL and the note that it now redirects. Editors will know what to do with that.
Submit the new URL as a new entry. Make a note on the new suggestion that the site used to be at the old URL. The new URL will be reviewed on merit. In this way, both submissions are clear, and are not spam. They are a help to the review process as they point the editor as to what to do.
DMOZ's dimminishing relevance
During my time as an internet marketer, I've been acutely aware of the ODP's dimminishing importance as Internet behavioural trends have changes over the years. However, it does remain important; especially to those websites that manage to get multiple entries in there. I've noticed one recently with 3 listings and another with 12, and one of these sites in particular is incredibly successful.
This makes me wonder about the policy for multiple entries and also whether having a site split across multiple domains and c-blocks (each with its own discrete subject matter and product range) provides a permissible way to get in more than once, or whether this is viewed as spamming the directory. Going by the information on the ODP site I would guess the latter, but I'm willing to be corrected.
DMOZ - what Now?
No backlog
Get Listed Faster - You're Wrong
*** Submitting your site to a higher category rather than a lower one is more likely to get you listed faster. ***
No it is not. The editors in the higher categories can edit in all the lower categories.
Anything suggested in the lower categories automatically appears on the radar of all the higher level category editors.
Submitting ONCE to DMOZ , a bit naive
A question about Dmoz
ODP
You could use the "suggestion" link to suggest more sites and the "update" link to write more comments about each individual site.
However you must realise that the ODP is not the Internet Police. There is a policy to not include sites that are illegal in and of themselves, but that still leaves a lot of room for "queestionable" sites to still be listed. Once you start censorship, where do you stop?
It is up to surfers to educate themselves as to the subject area they are getting into. Perhaps you should submit some sites that deal with chat-room safety (maybe there is even an ODP section about that already?).
Multiple languages on site
Thank you for your interesting article. There wasn't any reference to sites supporting more than a single language and that's my case.
My site (telecards.islands.co.il, already listed on DMOZ) caters for phone card collectors and has been running for several years. In recent months it has gone through a makeover and it's now offered in 23 different languages. No, it's not a commercial site, the site's community helped :)
I wish to know how to get it listed in all different languages. It's now on: Top: Recreation: Collecting: Phonecards but should probably appear on all other categories such as:
Top: World: Česky: Volný čas: Sběratelství: Telefonní karty Top: World: Français: Loisirs: Collections: Télécartesetc.Currently the other languages main links are under the main site, telecards.islands.co.il leads to the main page in English, telecards.islands.co.il/fr leads directly to the French version and so on.
Should I submit telecards.islands.co.il/fr as a new site? Should I use "update listing"?
Also, I feel that current description is misleading. It says "Worldwide collections of phonecards on display" whereas "Lets worldwide collectors manage their personal collection of phone cards from a centralized database" could be more appropriate (it's quite short and not an advertisement).
I would appriciate your comments as I don't want to hurt the current listing in DMOZ.
Thanks :)
Getting Listed
In reply to your comments
evoltawe: To suggest a better/more appropriate description, use the "update listing" link in the category where the site is currently listed. Do *not* use that link to suggest versions in other languages; instead, got to the appropriate categories under World and suggest the site there. Simply use the home page of the site (since the different language versions can easily be reached from there), make sure the *description itself* is in the appropriate language for that category (French, Dutch, etc.), and make sure you *only* submit versions that have been fully translated (by humans, not computer translations) --e.g., I looked at your FAQ in Dutch and noticed that the questions have been translated, but the answers have not... Good luck!
datajelly:
Multiple Languages
NO CHANCE!
How to get re-listed
Site *is* listed!
Site still not listed in the BEST directoy!
submitted to this directory
I think still DMOZ Listing is very tough, I am frustrated
site listing not showing on search results
I have tried for over 1 year to get my site www.mirabilisdesign.co.uk listed in the Shopping: Visual Arts: Sculpture category, to no avail. Finally I decided to reappraise what i was doing and tried listing it in the regional classification. My strategy being that it was likely the local editor might be more sympathetic to local submissions. It worked...! We are now listed there although strangely when you search dmoz we don't come up as being listed.. Any ideas..? Now my question is should I keep trying to re submit to my preferred classification "Shopping: Visual Arts: Sculpture " as we are national / international suppliers and feel the directory would be more accurate were we to be listed there. Is there any chance we may be removed from the regional classification as some sort of penalty for resubmitting to our prefered category. I have only ever submitted the site once every 4 months in my attempts to get classified. (is this too many times..?)
Thanks again and keep up the good work. Despite my troubles getting listed I'm 100 % behind dmoz... peter
Slight "lag" in search results
Peter: the DMOZ search results are not updated "in real time" --sites can be found using the search function a few days after they have been listed in the directory! (If you search for your site, say, a week after it has been listed, using either the URL or the site name, you should be able to find it.)
As for your other question: there is no reason whatsoever to assume that you will get a "penalty" for suggesting the site in the Topical part of the directory as well; but having said that, there's also no reason whatsoever to suggest the site there more than once. Just suggest it once; at some point in time, an editor will review it!
My site has vanished from Dmoz after 2 years...
Technical problem, not foul play!
Luis: there has been no "foul play", the site has been (temporarily) "unlisted" by one of our automated tools when it encountered a serious technical problem with the site.
One editor has already looked briefly at the site, but unfortunately he doesn't speak Spanish. There is nothing you must (or can) do right now, other than wait until one who *is* hispanohablante has reviewed the site again! :-)
Now I'm Afraid
Listing of Web Sites
Thanks for the update... but...
Im laughing so hard right now!
Just one more thing!
Is not DMOZ a SEO hideout?
DMOZ - backdoor to getting listed.