Question About DMOZ Directory

Chris Ralano · #1 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 07:57 AM

Hi Lisa (and other members),

You have a great site and I've been visiting it and reading your forum for months now. In fact, I showed your site to everyone I work with.

I have six websites that are all fairly new. The oldest is about 6 months old and it is listed in the DMOZ. Two of the sites are about 5 months old and the other three are only about 2 months old. Of course I have submitted all of my sites to the DMOZ directory.

I recently read a book called Getting to the Top of Google. In it, the author suggests that after waiting for several months to get into the DMOZ and not getting a site review that you should e-mail the category editor to inquire about it.

Do you think this is a good idea? I worry that I'll just make the editor angry and then they won't review my site ever! I have noticed an increase in traffic and backlinks in the site that is listed in DMOZ.

What do you think about contacting DMOZ category editors to inquire about the status of a site? Even if you do think contacting the DMOZ category editor is a good idea I would probably hold off on inquiring about the really new sites because I don't think enough time has passed.

Thanks for your help.

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 09:54 AM

Hi Chris

Thank you.

DMOZ is hit or miss these days and I think it's awesome that you got in within the last 6 months. I have a 3 year old site that I could never get in so you should be congratulated. LOL

It doesn't hurt (in my opinion) to email them once. Just don't bombard them. One time I got a response the other times I never did. Thank goodness DMOZ is not the only way to get good Google rankings. It's one of those things where if you can get in, great, but if not, move on.

TechieGuy · #3 (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 06:08 AM

6 months is really good to get into DMOZ. I have submitted my site several months ago, but have yet to be listed.

Great Elephant · #4 (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 08:34 AM

If you don't mind me asking what is DMOZ?

lisa · #5 (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 10:52 AM

It's a directory run by a series of volunteers. It's free to get listed in but very hard to get into. About 5 years ago this directory was THE place to make sure your site got listed in Google in a couple of weeks. Thankfully all that has changed and it's not nearly as important.

The only site I've managed to get listed in DMOZ is 2create and that was 6 years ago. I have not been able to get another site in since.

Chris Ralano · #6 (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 02:40 PM

Thanks for your responses.

I guess I should consider myself very lucky that I was able to get one site listed in DMOZ in a fairly short period of time.

I noticed that once the site was listed in DMOZ that MSN finally decided to index the rest of the site. MSN still only has one page indexed of my five other sites, but at least Yahoo and Google have indexed the rest of the pages. I was hoping that if I got the other sites into DMOZ that MSN might fully index the rest of my sites. Plus I think that even Google and Yahoo send more traffic once a site is listed in DMOZ.

Lisa, I took your advice and went ahead and sent a polite, very brief e-mail to the DMOZ category editor about my fish site. I only did this yesterday and so I still don't know if I'll get a response or not, or better yet, a listing in the directory

If this actually works and I get listed as a result of sending an e-mail to the category editor I'll let you all know.

lisa · #7 (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Ralano

Thanks for your responses.

I guess I should consider myself very lucky that I was able to get one site listed in DMOZ in a fairly short period of time.

Indeed. Many people try for years to get listed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Ralano

Plus I think that even Google and Yahoo send more traffic once a site is listed in DMOZ.

That definitely used to be the case although I'm not so sure that's as true anymore. My flat stomach site is not in DMOZ but manages to rank very well for thousands of different keywords in all th engines. But I do think the engines do give the directory some importance, just not as much as years ago.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Ralano

If this actually works and I get listed as a result of sending an e-mail to the category editor I'll let you all know.

Yes please let us know. I've had luck with this once. The editor replied and told me to resubmit to a different category so I thought that was nice. Of course this was 6 or 7 years ago. LOL

Clownfish · #8 (**permalink**) 06-22-2008, 11:10 PM

OK I know this topic is a bit dated, but I have to say my reef aquarium site was listed in dmoz after 2 weeks of submission. The listing came after I noticed an editor spend twenty five minutes and looked at nearly 30pages of content, I saw this using google anylitics.
While this is great news for my site, I have not noticed any benefits to the listing as of yet and nearly three weeks have passed since my acceptance. I was listed on google, msn, aol, and yahoo way before Dmoz accepted my site.
Now im not patting myself on the back or anything, Im just saying I think dmoz is past its prime and has little to no effect of search engine traffic.

Chris Ralano · #9 (**permalink**) 06-23-2008, 06:17 AM

Congrats on getting your reef aquarium site listed in the DMOZ! I've seen your site and it is very good and so I'm not surprised it is listed.

I think I now have to agree with you about the DMOZ. I only have one out of six sites listed in DMOZ. Right after this site was listed in DMOZ I noticed that MSN finally indexed all of the pages. Before that they only had one page of the site indexed. I thought MSN indexed the rest of it because of the DMOZ listing.

However, I now notice that MSN is indexing the rest of the pages for the rest of my sites and so maybe getting indexed by MSN has nothing to do with DMOZ.

I do get all kinds of backlinks from directories from the DMOZ listing and so maybe it helps with SEO a little.

I tried to get my aquatic site listed in DMOZ. I even sent the category editor an e-mail, but never heard back from him and never got listed either.

I guess I'll just forget about DMOZ. From what I understand, submitting your site to them is no guarantee that they'll even review it.

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