Students Of Success

How many of you are as frustrated as I am with attempting to get listed in the Open Project Directory (OPD)? You submit and wait…and wait. But nothing happens. You try to find out if there is any problem, but your communications (if you can find a way to submit an inquiry) are never answered. Operating this way, the OPD would be out of business if it were a real company. In fact, the OPD would already be irrelevant if it weren’t for the fact that Google and others draw upon its entries for their directories.

The OPD may have started out as a good idea, but it is floundering and hurting the Internet community. Its key weakness is the dependence upon volunteer editors to review submissions. Apparently there are not enough volunteers. Hence, some submissions wait years to achieve an OPD listing, if ever. Some OPD insiders hint at a million or more sites in the queue! I suspect it is a lot more, as in several million.

The OPD Website states “it may take several weeks or more before your submission is reviewed.” Who wouldn’t be happy if that were only the case? In reality, OPD advises to wait six months before making an inquiry about the status of a URL submission. But since they received so many inquiries and were unable to give meaningful answers, the inquiry service was discontinued (see “Announcements” at http://resource-zone.com/forum/). Now, when you submit your Website, you have no means of knowing if it is sitting somewhere in a OPD queue or was rejected (and if so, why?). Yet, they have a whole page dedicated to reporting suspected OPD editor malfeasance.

When one person on the OPD Resource Zone forum begged to have someone review his site after patiently waiting for two years, an OPD editor answered, “There is no editing tool that looks at the directory as a whole and determines which sites have been waiting the longest. The entire concept is irrelevant, as the length of time since submission is completely meaningless to us.” Later in the thread, the editor exclaims, ” It is really quite simple: there is no queue, there is no line, begging won’t help. We make no promises as to how long it will take to look at a given suggestion. You’ve done your part in suggesting the site, at some point an editor will either: discover the site on his/her own, or come across it in the pool of unreviewed sites. When either of those two conditions occurs, it will either be added to the directory or declined — or, the editor may choose to defer making a decision for an infinite period of time.” Folks, this is no longer a customer friendly organization.

But the OPD doesn’t consider Webmasters as their customers. In fact, they exhibit a disdain for today’s entrepreneur and tend to ignore the reality of the exploding Internet market. Instead of promoting the Internet, the OPD has now become a detriment to its progress. Their antiquated methods are clearly compounded by a reluctance to take advantage of technology to assist in scrutinizing submissions, or to charge a small fee to pay for full-time editors. By embracing a purist attitude that ignores the exponential growth in the number of Websites, the OPD is fast becoming the “blacksmiths” of the Internet age.

I have no argument with the concept of the OPD. It is a good one. But it is time for the OPD to fess up and admit that its operations are broken. The wheels have come off. It cannot handle the volume of website submissions and the situation continues to deteriorate. They can no longer claim to be a “directory of web sites that contain useful content for the users” when millions of quality Websites never show up in the Open Project Directory. Yet the OPD leadership fails to take obvious steps to turn it around.

The OPD dilemma would not matter were it not in the position of being the gatekeeper to several important directories and portals, including the Google directory. Otherwise, everyone would be content to let OPD editors wrap themselves in their priestly robes, take their secret scrolls and ride off into obscurity.

The question is, “What is Google doing about this?” Apparently nothing. This is strange, considering that it would be to Google’s advantage to capture the entire inventory of worthy sites in its directory. Certainly, there is an enormous profit opportunity for Google that is being missed because of its dependence on the OPD. Surely Google could allow direct submissions and accept those that have passed its own muster, say with a minimum page rank, and then present them in that order. Why Google and other entities that rely on the OPD haven’t taken any action is one of the industry’s eternal mysteries.

I know I speak for thousands - probably millions - of frustrated Web marketers when I urge Google to step in and either assist the OPD in cleaning up its mess or else abandon it as the sole gateway to its coveted directory. Maybe if we create a flood of emails to Google, it would have an impact. Altogether now, everyone shout “GOOGLE - IT IS TIME TO FIRE THE OPEN PROJECT DIRECTORY!”

About the Author

Al Kernek is a marketing consultant and the author of Put Your Business Online, a step-by-step guide written for entrepreneurs, Realtors and small businesses that explains how to successfully create and promote a low-cost Website. Realtors can learn more about Internet marketing and find supporting tools at his Website, http://www.renewsletter.com

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