DMOZ advice

[Kyle]

I have written a brief article offering specific advice on webmasters troubled by DMOZ.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. I hope it helps some of the webmasters here.

http://www.kylewilliams.com/webmaster/dmoz-advice.asp

[chromate]

For the purposes of your article, I think you've offered some key bits of advice. It will certainly help webmasters get their sites listed.

The low quality and poor way in which DMOZ operates is a totally different issue. And as you say, being a free service, they don't owe us anything.

[Boricua]

Thanks for the article ice.

I've been able to get some sites accepted into DMOZ and not others. Still, I've always had a few questions about my approach.

- Do people typically use a different email address for each site submission? I ask this because I wonder if DMOZ tracks where submissions are coming from (based on email address or IP). If one submitted lots of sites from the same email address, could DMOZ start to consider that email address to be "spammy".

- How common is it to submit sub-pages? So far I've refrained from the practice for fear of setting off DMOZ's "spam detection alarms". For those that do submit sub-pages, what is your approach? Do you submit a bunch of sub-pages at once or do you submit them in dribs and drabs?

- How common is it for people to resubmit? If you don't get into one category, do you try another category?

Thanks to anyone who can shed let on these questions.

[chromate]

An editor can see both your IP address and obviously your email. However, there's nothing to worry about so long as your site provides some worth to the category you're submitting to. This also applies to sub pages. There's nothing wrong with submitting sub pages if the content fits a category well and it provides something unique.

You need to be careful with re-submitting. Every time an editor edits / adds / removes or declines your submission, a note gets attached to that URL's DMOZ history. All the other DMOZ editors can see these notes. If an editor sees that a site has been declined in the past, then it instantly raises questions. For this reason, if your site doesn't get listed in your first choice of category, then find out why before you re-submit.

[Boricua]

Thanks chromate.



For this reason, if your site doesn't get listed in your first choice of category, then find out why before you re-submit.

How do you find out the reason? Do you email the editor directly? Also, what triggers the research task to figure out why you weren't listed? Do you simply wait a certain amount of time?

[chromate]

Yeah, give it a month or two and then email the editor directly. There's also a forum where you can find out, but I find it's better to just email them.

[Boricua]

Excellent. Thanks for your advice chromate.