Pt/ZnO nanorod (NR) and Pt/modified ZnO NR Schottky barrier ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors (PDs) were prepared with different seed layers and metal oxide modifying layer materials. In this paper, we discussed the effect of metal oxide modifying layer on the performance of UV PDs pre- and post-deposition annealing at 300°C, respectively. For Schottky barrier UV PDs with different seed layers, the MgZnO seed layer-PDs without metal oxide coating showed bigger responsivity and larger detectivity (Dλ*) than those of PDs with ZnO seed layer, and the reason was illustrated through energy band theory and the electron transport mechanism. Also the ratio of D254* to D546* was calculated above 8 × 102 for all PDs, which demonstrated that our PDs showed high selectivity for detecting UV light with less influence of light with long wavelength.