Check your DMOZ submission status!

[arius]

I know you've all been waiting for something like this.

http://open-directory-status.com

They promise to send you updates by email of your site submission status.

It's free for now but they will start to charge in the future.

Hope this helps some of us.

[David Wallace]

Just wanted to clarify that this is not a site that DMOZ owns or operates but rather looks like a service. Note disclaimer at bottom of page:

This site is not affiliated with ODP, DMOZ.ORG, Resource-Zone.com or Netscape. All information and ideas provided on this site are the opinions of the site owner, any use of this information is at the user's own risk. ©2004 MacLean Design Graphics Limited

Anyone can check their own site submission status for free at the ODP Resource Zone (http://resource-zone.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=22) in the Site Submission Status forum. They only allow you to check every six months so as long as you mark dates, it is easy enough to go back and reply to your active thread and get updates.

[seobook]

I used to use http://www.seotie.com to do that.

[kctipton]

I spotted that a few weeks ago. That's a site belonging to a current ODP editor AFAIK. Anyone could do what he's going to be able to do: parse the RDF file and sell reports.

[Marcia]

Quite frankly, I'd just as soon ask at Resource Zone. I've done so a couple of times and had almost immediate responses as to status - one within mere minutes.

The quickest ever was one that was originally an ecom site that I changed over to be an affiliate site that I knew for certain didn't qualify any longer, though it did when I first submitted. It needed to be removed from the submission queue, and it was - almost immediately upon request. I sure didn't want to appear to be someone trying to game the system when I knew better.

Insulting people's judgment and intelligence is *not* a viable option. It may be an effective life strategy for those who enjoy manipulating circumstances so that they can have an opportunity to whine about being "victimized" but not all of us have yet achieved that high a level of dysfunction. ;)

[arius]

I thought the whole point was that you would get to see what the editors and reviewers have been saying about your site submission directly from the dmoz internal comments journals. Truth be told I'm still waiting for a report, but that is what I am hoping to see.

I guess knowing what the comments say does not really help much but if the comments said something like:
"This site is crap. I'll never ever add this to the index!"

Then at least you'll know to give up on this site and build a better one to submit. Comments from resource zone are often terse and devoid of any details (thankfully) related to your site that you would want exposed in such a public forum.

I spotted that a few weeks ago. That's a site belonging to a current ODP editor AFAIK. Anyone could do what he's going to be able to do: parse the RDF file and sell reports.

Also what are these RDF feeds? Is there public access?

[Marcia]

what the editors and reviewers have been saying about your site submission directly from the dmoz internal comments journals.
Wouldn't some people consider that to be a breach of confidentiality? I know if I were an editor and my comments were published someplace without permission I'd feel like trust was violated; I wouldn't like it at all.

[arius]

Wouldn't some people consider that to be a breach of confidentiality? I know if I were an editor and my comments were published someplace without permission I'd feel like trust was violated; I wouldn't like it at all.

That's an interesting point Marcia, but should a DMOZ editor really have an expectation of privacy when they are involved with anything as public as an internet directory where site submitters are hoping for exposure on the internet?

I would think that editor's shouldn't expect a lot of privacy. I would hope that DMOZ provides a method for category managers to review other more junior editors work to make sure that it is being done right. They also have the freedom of information act (in Canada anyway) where private and public companies must hand over information about you or your property on request.
DMOZ could be more transparent so that abuse can be dealt with and they charter for fair review could be upheld.
What do you think?

[Marcia]

That's an interesting point Marcia, but should a DMOZ editor really have an expectation of privacy when they are involved with anything as public as an internet directory where site submitters are hoping for exposure on the internet?
Two points there. First, certain things are internal affairs for any organization, and no organization can function effectively unless they feel free to openly and adequately communicate.

Second - the part about submitters hoping for exposure. That's exactly where the meeting of the minds parts company. People submit because they want exposure; and from what I've been able to gather over the years, editors don't seem to give a hoot about giving individuals exposure. My impression has totally been that their concern is to build the directory with content that's of value to the internet.

I would think that editor's shouldn't expect a lot of privacy. I would hope that DMOZ provides a method for category managers to review other more junior editors work to make sure that it is being done right.
Again, that's an internal issue and while I don't know the procedures in place, it's my impression that there are internal controls and safeguards.

Public privacy for editors - yes Internally - nope. That's just mho; people need to keep their own house clean and they all have their own house rules.

They also have the freedom of information act (in Canada anyway) where private and public companies must hand over information about you or your property on request.
Here we can get our school history, medical records, employee records, etc. And a lot more about individuals can be gotten by court orders. That's totally different - ODP has nothing to do with people or their property, it's just a link to a site from a web page in the Directory and nothing more. If anyone doesn't want their link in there they can easily have it removed. But whether or not sites get included has nothing whatsoever to do with property.

DMOZ could be more transparent so that abuse can be dealt with and they charter for fair review could be upheld.
There's more than likely plenty of transparency internally, and systems in place to deal with abuse. It's abuse from submitters that's the rough part, and the less transparency the better would be my guess in that respect.

What do you think?
I think there should be transparency and accountability internally, and there most likely is. I also think that editors' privacy should be protected if they want it so. There are far too many nut cases running around in this world and some of them have modems and web sites.

[4eyes]

but should a DMOZ editor really have an expectation of privacy when they are involved with anything as public as an internet directory where site submitters are hoping for exposure on the internet?

Of course they should.

Comments made by an editor are made for the benefit of other editors.

Do you expect Google to make all their internal memos available for public viewing?

[eitemiller]

Here is a report that I got. I don't see much benefit to it IMO...

________________________
http://www.eatstayplay.com
** Processing Root for the ODP data

Status report for this URL(s) is limited to activity from 1 October 2004 to 5 October 2004

No history was found for this URL for the indicated date range. This could mean that the URL/site had been listed in ODP prior to the start of this report range (and was removed), or it was never listed in ODP. Assuming the site has been submitted to DMOZ/ODP for review, then it either has not been reviewed yet, or has been rejected. This system has no way of reporting any more detail than that.
Notes

Dates listed represent the date of the "snapshot" of the system, not the date that the change was made by an editor. The change to your listing would have been made at some point between the date and the previous date. The actual change appears on the public servers at some point after the editor makes the change - typically this is one to three days later, but at times may take longer. It is possible that in some cases, you may receive this report before the change is publicly visible.

Information is provided as described in http://open-directory-status.com/

This site is not affiliated with the Open Directory Project (ODP), DMOZ.ORG or Netscape. All information and ideas provided on this site are the opinions of the site owner, any use of this information is at the user's own risk. Site layout, concept and design ©2004 MacLean Design Graphics Limited - extracted site titles, descriptions and related data provided under the Open Directory License
_____________________

[macdesign]

Instead of guessing about editor notes being made open to the world - why not read what the site states:

http://www.open-directory-status.com/faq.htm

will not give any access to confidential ODP editor notes

-----

The benefit of the service to the user it that he/she will receive an automatic note when and if a site is listed, and will know which category/ies it was published in. If for example, you submit to category "A", and keep checking it every week to see if the site was included, it takes time to do that. If in the meantime, an editor decided to publish it in category "B", you would never know, and you could check for ever and not know it was ever included.

Once a site has been included in ODP, the benefit is knowing if a description has been changed, if a site has been dropped, or moved to another category.

--------

Take a look at the sample reports http://www.open-directory-status.com/sample_report.htm

[eitemiller]

The benefit of the service to the user it that he/she will receive an automatic note when and if a site is listed, and will know which category/ies it was published in. If for example, you submit to category "A", and keep checking it every week to see if the site was included, it takes time to do that. If in the meantime, an editor decided to publish it in category "B", you would never know, and you could check for ever and not know it was ever included.

Once a site has been included in ODP, the benefit is knowing if a description has been changed, if a site has been dropped, or moved to another category.


My site is eatstayplay.com - it takes 10 seconds to type "eatstayplay" into the DMOZ search engine. Am I missing something?

[macdesign]

Well of course, it's very easy to do, and anyone who is well organized will remember to do it every week.

But if you have clients, it's much nicer to send them a nicely formatted report - which would include a history of site activity.

But these days ODP times out a lot, so it's not really 10 seconds, it can be a few minutes sometimes.

And of course you always have to wonder if ODP search is actually working when you type something in. And also you have no idea how up to date the results are. Take a look at the number of times posts in RZ saying their site is not in ODP, since search does not find it - when in fact it was there.

[eitemiller]

Yea, that's pretty fair. DMOZ times out way too often, and if I did have multiple contacts (I do in-house SEO for one company) then the service can be of some value. I stand corrected - I was looking at this on a much smaller scale.

[kctipton]

Am I the only one who can use Google to quickly figure out macdesign's connection to the website? I think it's funny to be posting in here about your own site, mac :)

[macdesign]

You don't exactly need Google to figure out the connection between my name here and the web site in question. :) If I was trying to hide the fact that it's my web site, I think I would have used a different name. In my previous post, I had though it was obvious it was my site, but I forgot in this forum it's not iin my signature - in other forums it is.

[I don't make it obvious which editor I am in this forum or any other forum, but any ODP editor knows who I am very easily.]

[merlin78]

Anyone can check their own site submission status for free at the ODP Resource Zone (http://resource-zone.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=22) in the Site Submission Status forum. They only allow you to check every six months so as long as you mark dates, it is easy enough to go back and reply to your active thread and get updates.

Just a quick query before I attempt to post on this forum to check my submission status. Has anybody used this forum to check change of category requests as well? The category, that the site I work for is listed in, didn't have an editor so I am wondering whether it would be out of line to email an editor of a higher category to ask about the status of my request?

I have never had any trouble with Dmoz submissions but requesting a change in category is proving to be a tough challenge. I appreciate any thoughts on this issue.

[jimnoble]

It's fine to ask at Resource-Zone in the Site Submission Status forum where an enquiry is more likely to attract a response than emailing a particular editor.

Editors are discouraged from responding to direct emails because the ensuing exchange has been known to become threatening.

[Seotie]

Seotie was intended to allow you to take a more active role in your SEO. It is great to see a report of all of your domains in a directory, but when you manage hundreds of domains it is easy to miss the specific things you might be looking for. Seotie now offers support for Yahoo!, Google and Tygo directories, which do not have an direct feed. It will also monitor specific categories, so that you are aware of your domain's status in a specific directory, and will be beter able to fine tune your marketing strategy based on the way it will be indexed in multiple directories.

Thanks :)

(Yes, I am posting about my own website too :))

[sully]

LMAO

editors making money from this

ridiculously funny

[macdesign]

Where does it say an editor cannot make money? Are you planning on paying my mortgage this month?

An editor cannot use his position to breach leak confidential information about internal information in the directory, either for free or for money.

An editor cannot charge anyone for listing a site, or giving preferntial treatment.

Any violations you think you see report them as abuse.

[sully]

Ethics 101

It's leading people to believe they are getting preferential treatment or some other benefit. If you need to use the directory to pay your mortgage, you are in serious trouble and I am sorry about that. And if this is the case, how long will it be before money is accepted for listings and/or preferential treatment if the client list fails to meet that need.

Editors with ethics proclaim their pure and selfless motive of building an excellent directory. Finding ways to make money off the directory as an editor is just plain unethical.

Good luck...there are lots of people out there dumb enough to pay for this service.

[Dave Hawley]

Gotta love the choice of wordsThere is a strong opinion that having a site listed in ODP increases the ranking in Google and other search engines. We do not express an opinion on that, discussion about web site position, search engines and marketing are beyond the scope of this site, but many sites and forums exist to deal with that issue.Then they wonder why so many spam them. Go figure!


However, the time for a web site to be reviewed and accepted by an editor may range from a few minutes to a much longer timeWith a much longer being more like 31536000 minutes (1 year).

Let's face it folks, if people starting paying to find out their status and this money is given to editors, there wont be too many editors answering site status questions in RZ for too long.

[macdesign]

Obviously you miss the whole point, and don't take the time to read. I probably answer more status request questions in RZ than most editors. The information given in RZ is not the same thing. RZ will not give a history of your changes, and will not give you weekly information. The paid service will not give you information that is confidential but that is allowed to be given out in RZ. Read the FAQ.

It's no different than a service which randomly monitors your site and tells you your ISP server has been down. You could do it yourself, but it's time consuming. I am providing a service that saves you time, and does nothing that you cannot do yourself.

[Dave Hawley]

It's no different than a service which randomly monitors your site and tells you your ISP server has been down.Obviously you miss the whole point, and don't take the time to read. ;)

[paulhiles]

Seotie was intended to allow you to take a more active role in your SEO. It is great to see a report of all of your domains in a directory, but when you manage hundreds of domains it is easy to miss the specific things you might be looking for. Seotie now offers support for Yahoo!, Google and Tygo directories, which do not have an direct feed. It will also monitor specific categories, so that you are aware of your domain's status in a specific directory, and will be beter able to fine tune your marketing strategy based on the way it will be indexed in multiple directories.
I've been using this service for quite a while now, and must say I find it excellent. The email notifications save me time running around checking for dmoz inclusions, and the member's account area keeps all my monitored sites neatly organised by using appropriately named folders. Good work Seotie!

[Seotie]

Thanks for the praise Paul!

I think I should clear something up. I'm not sure if any one is under this impression, but Seotie has absolutely no affiliation with the ODP or any other directory, and provides a completely free service for monitoring the ODP. Something else to consider is that if more people are using Seotie to learn of their addition to DMOZ, then there will be fewer people bothering the editors, so they will be able to answer questions.

Thanks :)

[fathom]

Thanks for the praise Paul!

I think I should clear something up. I'm not sure if any one is under this impression, but Seotie has absolutely no affiliation with the ODP or any other directory, and provides a completely free service for monitoring the ODP. Something else to consider is that if more people are using Seotie to learn of their addition to DMOZ, then there will be fewer people bothering the editors, so they will be able to answer questions.

Thanks :)

There is another inherent value of Seotie in that 'you don't need to submit to get listed' and editors [particularly in new categories] preview, review, and list appropriate website to fill the category.

Seotie reports these as well - and have been notified numerous times for new lsitings when submitted ones are still in the quene.