Search: Blog Listed On The ODP

After just over a month of waiting, my little blog has been granted a listed on the Open Directory Project in the Weblogs/Personal/R category (actually listed on 28th of December at 3:45pm UK time). It’s listed as “Richy C’s Blog – Random ramblings about life, the web, the ODP and interesting finds.”

Yes, I am an ODP volunteer editor and because I’m an editall I could have added my site to anywhere in the ODP I liked – but I decided not to. I just submitted my site in the standard way (on the 8th of November at eight minutes past midnight) to the most appropriate category, and then waited for an editor specialising in that area to come along and review my site. When I submitted my site, there were over 100 unreviewed sites in that category (and, yes, I did do a quick ‘spam cleanup’ by moving other sites to more appropriate categories and reviewing one or two others) and now the unreviewed count in that category is down to single figures! Congratulations and thanks to the editor that reviewed my site (you know who you are 🙂 !).

Many people “grumble” about how long it takes to get listed in the ODP, but this instance shows that it just depends on how “interesting” each category is to an editor. If you submit to a Business/ or Shopping/ category that is normally full of spam, inappropriate submissions, affiliate link farms and the like – then the human volunteer editor will feel “downhearted” at having to continually separate the wheat from the chaff-but interesting categories such as some Arts/ and Regional/ tend to ‘attract’ editors as they are actually really interested in the subject matter.

Some people, reading that, may think “Well, I’ll submit to a totally inappropriate category in Regional/ then and my site will be listed really quick in Business” – but it won’t work that way. Your site will be reviewed, marked “Not appropriate for this category” and then moved to a category in the Business ‘tree’. It will probably won’t initially go to the ‘best’ category for your site and will then sit in ‘limbo’ being moved around categories, wasting editors time, until it get to the category you should have submitted to in the first place. THEN it will be reviewed and maybe listed – having been delayed for what could be several months. Of course, widely submitting your site to any category and in bulk will quickly earn you the label of a ‘spammer’ and ensure that your site will not be listed – ever! Oh – don’t worry, we do have ways of telling if you are trying to submit a competitors website to get them banned…

If you want to help the ODP – then please consider becoming a volunteer editor for any category that interests you!