Owen's X10 Blog

In my pursuit to promote our teams X10 websites I’ve searched various web resources and directories for places to include our new sites. The most famous directory on the web, in my opinion, would have to be the DMOZ. A lot of major search engines use it for search inclusion. This directory is slightly different, in that it is edited by humans. They use their discretion to decide which sites will actually be included in the DMOZ directory. In a lot of SEO forums it has been noted of the difficulty of being included in the directory. This personal discretion and the fact that these editors have to manually review each site is taking too long and keeping sites from being listed.

On the DMOZ website they have a social contract written out explicitly including the fact that the Open Directory will remain without inclusion costs. I was shocked today to find out that some of the DMOZ editors might be charging web publishers for inclusion. Browsing the webproworld.com forum I came across a post about this very thing happening. An editor from the DMOZ contacted the owner of a submitted website. He explained to him that though not condoned, editors do take money in return for reviewing and including websites. He even went on to give this guy a breakdown in prices corresponding to wait time for inclusion. Check it out:

FROM THE POST ITSELF AT WPW

To get reviewed:
Within a year: $50.00
Within 6 Months: $75.00
Within 3 Months: $90.00
Within 1 Month: $125.00
Within 2 Weeks: $180.00
Within 1 Week: $225.00
Within 3 Days: $275.00
Within 24 hours: $300.00
ASAP: $350.00

Following the post down the line it looks like the editor is no longer part of the DMOZ. There are many paid inclusion sites, and that’s fine with me. In this case with such an emphasis on it being the largest human edited FREE directory, then hopefully this isn’t really happening – but I’m sure it is to some extent.. I have yet to have success in getting a site listed in the open directory. It seems the DMOZ were prompt in their reply to the wpw forum member who reported the abuse, but hopefully they are working hard on preventing this from happening. With such a huge backlog of sites to be reviewed it’s clear to me that their system is not working. I do not know the solution, but I do feel it shouldn’t be such a heavily weighted and important directory if it is corrupt and inefficient.

I doubt I will even attempt putting our new projects website in the directory. We’ve been spending so much time working on it that I wouldn’t want to waste any on the DMOZ. As soon as we have something to present to our X10 fans on the new product I promise I’ll post it here first.