DMOZ is Back Online

Cool to have it back up, but I have to agree with the comment above:

"But since I am now an experienced guy in SEO, I dont care for DMOZ anymore"

A couple things that should be noted. Your SEO and marketing efforts are not foiled if you do not get in, but if you are lucky enough to get in as I have on quite of few of my sites it does help! But seriously if you are putting all your SEO marketing "eggs" in the DMOZ basket you are a fool!

That's funny, they post they're back online but when I try to suggest my website they say they are experiencing some technical difficulties.

I hope they get back online ASAP so I can add myself to their index.

Merry Christmas Everyone! And a happy new year!

I have been trying to get a listing edited now since July 2002 which had been changed and abused by an editor that was being paid by a competitor.

Although the editor has been stopped from editing under that particular name I believe he had other pseudonyms because the listing kept changing until it is now unrecogniseable from what it should be.

A very poor showing by DMOZ, I still have some faith in the idea by like communism in practice it falls down due to mismanagement.

All men are created equal, some more equal than others. :-)

I had no idea it was even down. Do we have to re-submit our sites if we were in the DB before?

Hey Aaron, Is Danny your brother? I recently read an article by him about google and 2007. Highly informative. I understand that it is all speculatory, but it makes so much sense. Also, Happy Holidays!! I been reading your stuff for awhile now. Great stuff!!

I do not have a brother named Danny.

I had a site get into a major category on DMOZ after about a year of waiting patiently.

Who knows, maybe there was some small increase in rankings from it, but it was negligible at best.

I can tell you that pretty much no regular user uses DMOZ. No traffic has come to us from DMOZ.

So go DIAF DMOZ..

When was the last time you or anyone you know actually used DMOZ to look for something?

Would any webmaster care about getting listed in DMOZ if linking was not part of search algos?

I think our time is better spent buying, begging for or requesting links from sources that will send us real, qualified traffic, seo benafit second. If I were search engine I would look at link importance that way...

Even though DMOZ is back up and running, I don't think it would make a difference to those who have already submitted their sites and are waiting since months. Many believe that DMOZ is a 'submit it and forget it' directory. I think they should seriously speed up their acceptance procedure to clear the backlog.

Dmoz is now open to the public. I just resubmited my site after 5 months. I am hoping for a supernatural intervention...you know how it goes. They have made it so hard to get listed, when you get listed, you feel like you won something...

you can submit sites now too!

Also, many of the sites waiting to be reviewed have yet to be restored to "unreviewed" status.

Dang...I was rather enjoying their eventual disappearnace.

Please wake me up when it's over.

I bet if you ask 100 people their thoughts about DMOZ you'll get 90 that say that don't know what it is, 9 pissed off webmasters that hate it, and 1 person that was lucky enough to hobnob one of those live people to 'review' and 'list' their site. What a waste of our brain cells to even be talking about DMOZ - really. A boring, categorically disorganized mess is what it is. Any directory that needs such (incredibly SLOW) human intervention might as well throw in the towel.

Am I bitter? Yes. Just like 90% of the other webmasters that have submitted their damn listing years ago (and five times in the meantime for good measure), but never got a peep back as to 1) why the site isn't listed 2) what we can do to improve our chances of getting listed 3) why we got denied a listing. I know they may be short on personnel, but to act like such snobs - almost as if the world revolves around them - is ignorant.

Nice DR planning, BTW, DMOZ.

I'm been fortunate enough to get whatever site I submitted accepted into the directory, though it does take a few months for them to get listed.

It's good to see DMOZ back on track. Just wish they would accept more editors so as to speed up things.

You are one of the lucky ones Ajay - I've submitted one of my sites, the Madtown Lounge, a few times and have seen nothing. That particular website is an event calendar / venue lookup / musician listing tool - I don't see the problem I've had with it. Maybe my problem is similar to what I had with Microsoft AdCenter - I have taverns/bars/pubs in my venue directory, but for no other purpose than to allow bands to say where they are performing or for users to find where they are located. I don't promote alcohol by any means, but Microsoft AdCenter did in fact snub my ads because I had those in my system. I have since gone through an appeal and the ban has been lifted, but with no open lines of communication (with DMOZ), there is no way to figure out why else that particular site isn't listed as requested. THAT in fact is the beef I have - there is no way to know what is going on or why a site is not getting listed. If every other site didn't hold the DMOZ listing in such high regard, I wouldn't care one bit. However, it affects my site's credibility when I can't get listed there. A lot of tools factor DMOZ listings, or lack thereof, into their magic formulas for ranking a website.

I really don't understand why DMOZ is so important nowadays.. Doesn't it smell archaich?
Anyway I've been fortunate too with my personal blog, now, as soon as they will be back, I'll try to get my "serious" blog (www.mapelli.info) listed too... cross your fingers! :)

Truth be told, DMOZ isn't really necessary anymore. I mean seriously, you go out and get some good relevant inbound links on a site/page that gets cached regularly and *BLAMO* the googlebot just did the DMOZ's editors job. You're now indexed in Google and the other SE's will follow suit as they always do.

If DMOZ is going to remain relevant, they need to clean house of the bad apples that have given them a bad name over the years, accept more people to become editors (possible college credit for some kind of internship?), and obviously integrate a better system for better turnaround and webmaster communication. But what do I know...

Like wikipedia, many DMOZ editors stake out a space for themselves and prevent potential competitors from being able to add their own websites.

Ruins the who thing, IMHO

Awesome, thanks for the update. Yes its archaic but i would love to know when its back up again. A couple of friends were lucky and got some of their sites listed and wow, quite the difference. I submitted mine 3 months ago still no shibang....

I would love to rant but Allen nailed it -- took all the wind out of my sails. Personally, I would like to see AOL get involved and pay editors for their time. If someone doesn't then I sure hope Google and Yahoo de-emphasise it's value (rumor is they are) so we can all quit worrying about it.

I'm the editor of a very small category on DMOZ.

Like Allen suggested, the trouble with DMOZ is that the only people who use it are webmasters. Therefore pretty much everyone who wants to become an editor does so because they have a vested interest in doing so. It's not surprising therefore that a lot of applications get rejected; the irony is that the people rejecting the applications are hypocrites, they just happened to get accepted as editors.

It would take huge investment to change this and get the everyday geek editing DMOZ just because they believe in it. Since I can't see that happening ever DMOZ is doomed to its own destruction.

I don't think DMOZ is doomed because it will still be there regardless of it's value to marketers. I'm an editor as well and I love to edit small regional categories. It's just fun to see what websites the "little guys" are putting up.

I was beginning to wonder if it was just me that couldn't submit new URLs. Between the ODP and Gravatar, I'm not sure who I'm more disappointed in seeing down.

I have also experienced similar problems. Genuine listings submitted years ago are never added. Why? No editor every responded. Why? Need to digg into this!

Most of comments above [bias, vested interest, inadequate resources, luck ;), etc. ] answer this question.

Still hoping to see my website listing someday soon!

Well I tried DMOZ when I started SEO and read somewhere that it is very important to list on DMOZ becasue Google likes it.. Now couple of years have passed away and the sites which I had submitted in the begining are still getting listed.

But since I am now an experienced guy in SEO, I dont care for DMOZ anymore.. better put my efforts on better link building & Quality Content then wasting time on just trying to get listed on DMOZ and wait for months and years to just get listed.. Content sites are much better ranked then the sites that are just listed on DMOZ.

bottomline is that DMOZ is also part of this world. so No worries if you even dont bother to get listed on it.