URL Updates and Public Suggestions.

Tonight I stepped out of character and worked on public suggestions and URL updates.  Just to make it more interesting, I focused in the Adult section.  Hey someone has to do it. 

Just a few observations I made today:

1. Is it really so hard to get somewhat close to the right category?  I a mean come on, I had to move a Spanish Mobile Homes site out of Adult and over to Regional.  <rolls eyes>
2. Why is that 90% of the update requests I looked at today were just poor attempts to keyword stuff their descriptions?  Oh I re-wrote a few of them that needed it, but only one update request was pretty close to being ok.  I almost sent the submitter an email encouraging them to apply.
3. Adult Oriented sites are an interesting breed……

There are a ton of update requests needing processed.  I don’t know why I stumbled into the ones in Adult but that is where my edits lead me tonight, so thats where I went.  I also managed a few minutes over at Resource Zone.  Funny Spam everywhere there too.

Hey did I mention yet that I fell into the world of Twitter?  Well I did, not sure why though.  I seem to be more of a blogger than a tweeter.  I have a couple of  opinions on social networking sites.  My Space appears to be the best tool the FBI every came up with, Facebook is for those of us old guys trying to relieve some of the glory days  and Twitter seems to be a good place for what I imagine to be a lot of lonely people who love to hear themselves talk. 

Yikes, I can see the letters coming in now.  It should be noted however that I am on all three of these occasionally and as I have no followers at all, yet 11 updates in only a couple days being on Twitter I certainly fall under the category of “Must like hearing my self talk”.  The good news is I am following one of those good “Tweeters” so I feel better about having the account.

Where Can I Check The Status Of My Submission?

This is a topic I brushed upon back in October of 2007, but a recent blog comment on this subject begged the question yet again. The question of automatic status checks or a vehicle for submitters to manually check the status of their suggested URL’s is an often asked one.

At present there is no official avenue for someone to check the status of a site suggestion.  In the past the forums at the Resource Zone offered a place where submitters and site owners could ask for a  status of their submissions.  This was a failed experiment for many reasons.  The major problem as I see it, is in what the purpose of the status check would accomplish that would be beneficial?

At the moment there is no official avenue for submitters to check the status submissions.  Frankly I see nothing positive for anyone (except of course the professional spammer) that could come from providing status checks.  You see there really is only a couple of responses that can be returned on a status check:

1. Your site has been rejected. – Sites that don’t meet the criteria or guidelines for inclusion will be discarded/not included.   In the vast majority of cases, sites that fail to be guideline compliant for a listing cannot be made compliant.  As the failed experiment at RZ proved, telling someone that their site isn’t listable rarely has a positive side.   Besides tailoring a site to fit guidelines of one directory or a group of volunteers is foolish, the site presumably is already tailored for its target audience/customers and that is what is important.  One directory listing isn’t nearly as important as serving customer needs.
2. Site is listed. – Umm, that can be determined already by simply looking at the category.  Its a waste of time for editors and/or resources to report back something that anyone can see for themselves.
3. Your site hasn’t been reviewed yet (or has been moved to a more appropriate category for review).  – Means nothing really.  This is of course going to be the most common answer available and given the volunteer nature of the directory there is no way to predict who or when someone will choose to review the suggestion.

The bottom line is, what do you do if the result comes back as 1, 2, or 3?  The answer in all three cases should be exactly the same.  Nothing should change.  Site owners should/must continue to maintain, expand, and promote their sites for the benefit of their customers and visitors.   The site should be for its intended target, not a group of volunteers for the purpose of gaining 1 link.

The long standing advice has always been “suggest and forget”, and while its been said ad nauseum  it really is good advice.  Suggest the site and forget about it.  It’s a much better plan to focus ones resources on what is within one’s own control, and the time and opinions of a third party group of volunteer’s certainly falls outside of ones own control.  DMOZ welcomes site suggestions and most editors are very thankful to have the help of site suggestions in building the directory.  DMOZ does NOT however provide a listing service for websites, and thinking otherwise will only result in frustration.

Shameless plug time :

Oh and by the way, if you are interested in purchasing directory listings (other than in DMOZ) the Best of the Web (BOTW.org) offers some services that might be of interest to you. 

—Disclaimer–

As always, the opinions expressed in this blog and in my articles are my own.  I do not speak for DMOZ, BOTW, or any other organization.  entity or editors.  My opinons come from my own personal experiences,  but certainly do not (nor are they intended too) reflect the opinons of anyone else or any other editors.

Official Blog – DMOZ Is Like Gold

The title DMOZ Is Like Gold caught my eye today. I thought to myself, thats great another “official” posting is on the blog. That’s gonna be good news, posts have been rather few and spread out lately. Then I read the post and my heart sank. The blog post was to thank another blog for ’showing DMOZ some love’ by including it favorably in a post. Unfortunately the love being shown was, misplaced and out and out wrong.

Firstly to be clear, the article that the DMOZ Blog is applauding is a direct copy of an article written by another blog a couple of weeks earlier. So we are not even officially thanking original content for the love, rather only a copy. Thats kind of ironic, but certainly not funny in the least.

Secondly, editors have long been battling the magic bullet theory. This article basically continues all of the mis-information that editors have tried to correct for a long time. DMOZ is not more important than other quality links, in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of well placed, high ranking sites have no DMOZ listing. On the other hand many listed sites in DMOZ fair poorly in search results.

Here are some other problems with the article:

1. Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold. Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits. – I have never seen any evidence to support that theory, in fact most that I would consider experts say that there is no more weight given to A DMOZ listing than any other quality link. Therefore, its good to have as many quality links as possible, but plenty of sites are very successful in search results without a DMOZ listing.
2. Find the perfect category for your site and check to see if it has an editor. If you see a link “Volunteer to edit this category” try and find another relevant location. Pages without active editors take much longer to get listed into. - Wrong. Most categories in DMOZ are without a named editor, having a named editor does not mean a faster review time. There are a couple hundred editors with permissions to edit in any given category. They are just as likely to be editing in a category without a named editor, as a category editor is to edit in one with their name on it. Suggesting a site to a category other than the most relevant category, will do the opposite. Many times an editor will find the mis-submitted site and just forward it along un-reviewed to the proper category. Thus putting it back at the bottom of the pool. In a lot of cases, the editor that finds it won’t even have permissions (or interest) in editing the category it should have been suggested. Just suggest it to the best category in the first place, thats the best course of action.
3. Once you find the perfect directory submit your site every 4-6 months until listed. If you are lucky you will get in eventually. – Brilliant <insert sarcasm>! This is the worst bit of ‘advice’ yet. Not only has it suggested that you slow down your own review time by overwriting previous suggestions (if the reviewing editor chooses, they can review sites by submission date and the new suggestions would overwrite the original one sinking the suggestion to the bottom of the pile), but it has also basically just advise you to become a directory spammer. Enough of these re-suggestions and your site will never get accepted, for it will be tagged as spam and banned from inclusion.

I realize why the DMOZ blog chose to post a message about the article. Its always nice to be shed in some good light occasionally. However this article does not show the project in a good light, instead its makes outrageous statements based on incorrect advice and further adds to the mis-information that editors have tired to combat for many years. Some corrections have been made, but frankly I wish the post was removed. That is unfortunately beyond my control, so I will continue to try and provide honest and factual information to dis-spell the horribly bad advice that the original article was giving.