Was checking out my analytics and found this site that referred someone to my website...

Thought it was interesting as it has A LOT of guides in Texas:

http://www.dmoz.org/Recreation/Outdoors/...d_States/Texas/

913 outfitters and guides...

Just found it interesting...

Anyone heard of this site?

J.J.

Never heard of it, but that's a good site.

Must be legit. It has DOVEBLASTERS on there.

this won't be the last time it happens either. When I first started guiding 18 years ago my service popped up a few of these website " lists" as well without me subscribing to them. how I got on there I have no idea. But free advertising never hurts, as long as the info is correct.

Noticed I was on there! No one ever contacted me about it. Link works right to my page so free advertisement I'm not gonna complain.

I agree!

J.J.

Guess Im not apart of the cool club! Darn the luck

The guy that manages the site/list popped on here the other day. I think he is in the outfitter section. Said he wanted to get it up to date.

You are now The reason you weren't is because I didn't look close enough and thought Ranger Creek Goose was a subsite of Ranger Creek Ranch. Here the thread I started in outfitters http://www.texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4500477/Open_Directory_Project_categor

Finding sites and listing them is one of my hobbies. I'm one of dmoz editors that can add sites in any category - I've been doing it since 1999. I used to edit in the hunting categories for a long time, but they had resident editors. so I hadn't looked at the category for a couple of years. I decided to update it and kept finding more and more sites It had about 260 sites when I started several weeks ago. About 1/4 of the sites' meta tags consist of "HOME PAGE", so some are not real easy to find

A listing in the Open Directory is always free so don't let anyone try to sell you a listing there. The only drawback from a site owners point of view is that you don't get to decide what the description is We try to keep the descriptions short and free of ad copy or hype, so "BEST DUCK HUNTIN ANYWHERE. EVER!!" is definately not gonna happen

This is me. http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor=bldarter

You do this a a hobby?

Yep, when I am stuck at home. When I started doing this, it wa the relatively early days of the www , the information was scattered and the search engines weren't very good (pre-google). I had a site where I was listing good hunting, fishing and other sites I found, so other people wouldn't have to jump through hoops to find them (and so I could find them again). I stumbled across dmoz.org which was doing what I was doing on a grand scale. I became an editor there and now I am a senior editor of sorts there.

Some people collect old fishing reels or whatever. I collect relevant web sites to whatever category I am focused on. It's cheaper and doesn't clutter up the house

All the editors at open directory are unpaid volunteers, except for a small tech support staff that AOL provides.

I wonder how many of those guides/outfitters are no longer in business?

I do too. No way for me to know for sure either without calling them all. There were sites that I didn't add because their latest hunt price list or hunt pictures were several years old. But there are some guides in this area that I know are still in business who have only old hunts and information on their sites.

There was on coastal waterfowl club that I didn't list because they had a semi-hidden ad-link for Cialis toward the bottom of the page I'm assuming that site may have been repurposed I think it was Matagorda Waterfowl Club or something like that. I checked all the links that were added years ago to make sure they were working, but I didn't check the content closely.

There were two sites I didn't add because it is absolutely obvious that they were canned shoots. "If we don't have an animal you want to hunt, we'll try to get one for you" type statements. One was up near Lubbock and one was in the midcoastal area.