Resource-Zone FAQ

No, please do not do this. There is generally one category which best fits any site (there are some exceptions). Choose the one most relevant category and suggest your URL there. If you are still having trouble finding a category, just do your best and select the one that you think might be most relevant. If it is not quite right, the reviewing editor will make sure to move it to the correct category for consideration.

What you are seeing at the bottom of the category is that there is no editor named. This does not mean that a category gets no editor attention. Any editor "higher-up" the category tree can edit in a category lower down. In addition to this, there are two categories of editor, called Editalls and Metas who can edit any category in the directory. So yes, someone will eventually review every suggestion.

The simple answer is "forever".

The ODP submission guidelines used to say to do it every month, but this has been rendered unnecessary by changes in how the ODP works. Once a suggestion has been received, it will never go away. It will sit in that category, awaiting review. Suggestions do not expire.

So the preferred method is now to suggest the site to the category and wait at least a month. If, after a month, the site has not appeared, then feel free to submit one more time only. Please note that a new suggestion to the same category overwrites the previous one. Editors have many ways of sorting the pool of unreviewed sites in a category and one of them is by suggestion date. If this is the case, then a re-suggested site will show up further down the list and may end up taking longer to get reviewed.

The ODP is a directory, not a search engine. The ODP search function is intended primarily as a convenient tool to find relevant categories on a particular topic, rather than sites. Its data is based on the title and description in ODP, not a crawl of the website. It does not have a very sophisticated keyword algorithm, does not perform any type of ranking analysis, and is not intended for use by the average surfer as a search engine.

The best way to search for a specific site with ODP search is to search on the URL without the www. For example, if you are looking for all occurrences of http://www.example.com , including individual pages (known as "deeplinks" in the ODP community), try searching for “example.com”. The search database usually lags behind the true state of the categories by at least a week, although sometimes it is longer.

Because of these factors, it is certainly not a reliable means of finding out whether a particular site is listed in the ODP or not.

If the site has something that is clearly of regional relevance, yes. Examples would be a business that has a physical office which a user could walk into, or a kennel - anything which obviously would be of interest to a user looking for local things. A prerequisite of this, of course, would be that this location information be fairly prominently displayed on the site (like in a "Contact" page).

Some types of sites are ONLY listed in the Regional "tree", some never in Regional, so there are always exceptions. If you believe that a site could fit into both, then submit to both - you will not get penalized for doing this.

The time between suggestion and an editorial review ranges anywhere from two minutes to over two years. This is due to the voluntary nature of the ODP - editors volunteer their time free of charge to do what they can to build the directory. Reviewing suggested sites is only one of many tasks which editors need to perform, and for many editors, not the top priority.

Sites suggested to the directory by users is just one source of content for the ODP - editors are encouraged to go out on their own and find sites which could be listed.

We look at each site individually, and in whichever order an editor wants to. Therefore it is perfectly possible that a competitor has been listed first (someone has to be, after all).

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. First, different people have different views on what makes a "good" site. It is for this reason that we have the ODP guidelines and note that a lot of it is left up to editor discretion.

Second, standards change - years ago, when the ODP was a fledgling directory, the priority was to increase the size as quickly as possible. The focus has changed much more now onto the quality of the sites listed. So there may well be some sites listed which, if suggested today, would not be. In these sorts of cases, random reviews of categories by editors will remove those. If "worse" means "not meeting DMOZ guidelines", then you can use the abuse report procedures on DMOZ itself, or PM a meta as described in the abuse forum.

Third, sites change - what was once a great resource might well have been abandoned by its webmaster or changed to become something completely different. If you find such sites, and wish to help the ODP become a better directory, then please submit the category and site information in the Abuse forum - this will bring it to our attention.

Finally, as the ODP matures, the bar for "unique content" gets raised higher and higher. We don't look at suggestions and think "Well, this is no worse than anything else so I'll add it." How does that improve the category? If you wish your site to be listed in a particular category, it should be better than the best site already listed and offer content not offered by any other site already in the category. Don't aim to be second worst, aim to be best.