I'm wondering: do DMOZ and Yahoo still list new sites? I tried to add my site to DMOZ under 'personal homepages' 2 months ago but it isn't listed yet. And also, the number of sites listed under 'personal homepages' (10587) stays the same day after day. Everything depends on the effort of the editors and I don't think DMOZ is doing a good job.

Submitting a site to Altavista and FAST is not a problem, but DMOZ, Yahoo and Google? I think it's very very hard to get your site listed with them nowadays and that's a pity.

If you have decent content on your site, the search engines will pick it up, believe me ;)

When I switched my site from a free site to a domain name it took less than 2 weeks to see results from google and yahoo in my stats.

Well my site is at http://www.vangarsse.com. It's more a homepage and all text is actually in the image, but nevertheless, it's no bull****. I don't know why it's not listed under DMOZ, Yahoo and Google yet. There are other sites listed under Google who have a link to my site so that could not be the problem.

Ya think it might be because they can't spider text in images? ;)

Yes I know, but there are keywords so...?

And how long does it take before a site is listed in DMOZ and Yahoo? It seems like DMOZ is almost dead. Many categories don't have editors or only a few. I don't know how many sites are submitted every day under DMOZ but I assume a lot. How can they keep up? The same for Yahoo directory. Not much life in it.

Sorry mate, if that is all there is to your homepage, you will never get listed :(

OK, I can understand Google doesn't list my site because there's no plain text in my site/page but what about DMOZ? They just don't accept new personal homepages anymore (lack of editors?). If you look at this page: http://dmoz.org/Society/People/Personal_Homepages, then you see there are 10587 sites listed in this category. Well, I bet, next week, it's still 10587.

yeah, we had good results listing am-serv.co.uk for a client, i think one of the main reasons is that i also got the site listed in lots of directories, and google looks for how many links it has from other sites when placing it

Yeah, I understand the 'Google' thing by now:
1) make sure you have quality plain text in the site
2) make sure some other sites who are listed under Google place a link to your site.

Thanx for the info

But now for DMOZ:
Current sites listed in these categories:
Arts -> Movies: 29162
Arts -> Music: 101715
News -> Media: 1256
Society -> Religion: 93273
Computer -> Internet: 37772
Science -> Psychology: 3400
Sports -> Soccer: 10826
SOCIETY -> PEOPLE -> PERSONAL HOMEPAGES: 10587

Let's see next week, how many new sites are added... I guess not much!! DMOZ IS DEAD!!

From a quick look of your site, I really do dealt a dmoz editor would list your web-site.
There's not enough unique content for them to list your site in Dmoz.

As for Yahoo! you have to pay Yahoo! $299us to get in the Yahoo! directory. However now that Yahoo! inter-mixes there results with Google you can obtain good results on Yahoo! via good placement in Google.

As you mentioned for Google you have to have more unique content, There's nothing on your page for Googlebot to read except for the Meta Description Tag. Googlebot likes Body copy which can be read, eg; not embedded in an image.
Even if you do manage to get crawled by Googlebot and indexed into Google you will have trouble getting any sort of decent traffic.
Work on keyword-enriched body copy content and getting more links to your website.

Also consider a Goguides.org and Joeant.com listing when you have enough decent unique content.

I thought I would help test your theory. I added my site: http://www.allan.org to the Personal Homepages category. There is obviously a lot of content on my site, and it is linked by other sites...so there should be no reason for an editor to reject it. I'll let you know the results.

@ Allan: may I ask WHEN did you submit your site to DMOZ?

In the beginning it's all very nice to start a project like DMOZ, but now they can't keep up with tons of site submissions. Most categories aren't updated anymore.

I just added it last night after reading your post. Around 9:00PM EST.

OK.

Originally posted by pascalvg
Well my site is at http://www.vangarsse.com. It's more a homepage and all text is actually in the image, but nevertheless, it's no bull****. I don't know why it's not listed under DMOZ, Yahoo and Google yet. There are other sites listed under Google who have a link to my site so that could not be the problem. Well maybe search engine can't crawl images.

well my sites seem to not have a problem getting into these search engines. I just create them and they are in with out havint submit anything. Googlebot visits my site three times a week according to cpanel.

Originally posted by pascalvg
Let's see next week, how many new sites are added... I guess not much!! DMOZ IS DEAD!! Some categories (and some editors) are more active than others, but in no way is dmoz dead. I just picked one of the categories you listed (Computer -> Internet) and it's already changed (37,883 right now). Personal Homepages appears to have changed too, to 10,588 -- so somebody got in. :)

In any dmoz category an editor has to look at your site and decide that it's appropriate, and in every category it's important that you follow any specific guidelines. Are you sure you submitted your site to the correct letter category, for example? Did you follow all of these guidelines, most importantly those about how to format the title and description in your submission? http://dmoz.org/Society/People/Personal_Homepages/faq.html

But honestly, the site is just a contact form. I really wouldn't expect to see it in dmoz unless you add some content.

Yes, but it's so unfair. What if a category has no editor and your site really has to be listed in that category?

if there's no editors dmoz has 'meta' editors which can edit any category within the dmoz directory.
If there is a long wait it is possible a meta editor will go through cat's that have an editor but have not been editored for a long time.
you can get a status report of your site and if it's been queued/rejected at the ODP forum http://www.resource-zone.com/

Originally posted by nuthin
if there's no editors dmoz has 'meta' editors which can edit any category within the dmoz directory. True, and editors can work in categories hierarchically below theirs. So an approach to take for a category where no editor is listed is to submit to it anyway first; if after a few weeks you're still not listed submit again, wait a couple of weeks and then submit to the next category above where there are editors.

But in any case be sure first that you have a completed site with unique content (dmoz has no intent to list every site, so they don't mind skipping you) and that you follow any specific guidelines for the category to which you are submitting. "Personal homepages" is an example of a category which does have guidelines different from the rest of the directory.

We submitted a site to DMOZ 4 months ago. After 2 months we contacted one of the editors in that category. He reviewed the site and recommended it for listing at that time. We searched the sites domain 1 month ago. Nothing. Again contacted the same editor, and was told it should have been listed. He verified that it was not, and recommended it once more. Now, a month later, it still isn't listed.
the thing that worries me is the fact that the editors can also have a competing business, and so may choose NOT to recommend your site for inclusion. Not saying this is happening, but it is disconcerting.

@ nuthin: thank you very much for that link to the DMOZ message board!!!

pascalvg - if I were looking for a personal website, I wouldn't spend any time at yours, because you have no content. There is no information about you, nothing that might intice me to fill in that form, or anything. Also your keywords aren't very effective. Google don't use meta tags like that. To get better result there you need some headings and some content and some images with useful filenames and alt-tags.

Now, if you added som content...:)

Pascal, I'm sorry but you'll find it impossible to list a site, personal or otherwise, that is just a form

you really have to have something in it
what were you thinking of putting there ? what kind of content ? is it about you and what you do, your hobbies etc -- about your hometown -- your friends -- youir convictions ?

have a look at some other personal pages and you'll get some inspiration but the first things should be "who- what -"

who you are and what the site is about
have a look round, get some ideas, then submit again

cheers !