hutcheson

Re: http://www.baby-jogging-strollers.com - Statu Still in queue. Queue is short (a dozen or so sites.) No need to submit again at this point.

Not precisely misinformed, but a bit unclear on the concept of "possibility." "can have two links" doesn't mean "webmasters have blanket permission to place two links in the category of their choosing." (You will notice that the SUBMITTAL guidelines say, "Pick the ONE best category.") It means "in some circumstances, editors are allowed the option of listing sites more than once, subject to various guidelines, accepted practices, and staff overview." The second listing, just like the first listing, is at the editor's discretion, not automatically given upon request. Within topical categories, even editors will for most sites be trying to find the "one best category" -- so a request for a second category may very well result in the first listing being moved or deleted.

Re: http://www.mooseheadcabins.com/snowmobile_rent This is a "If B. U. R. D. doesn't spell 'bird', what does it spell?" kind of question. (Why must it spell anything?) Note that deeplinks are the "exception", not the rule. In this case, this page of the site is obviously of Regional rather than global interest, as is the main page. Is there any reason that you thought the listing for the main site didn't adequately represent this part of the content?

Re: http://www.mooseheadcabins.com/snowmobile_rent I don't believe your site is appropriate for that category. (But I can see why you thought so; there are some other sites listed that IMO should be elsewhere.)

>I can pretty much guarantee that the site will provide the cheapest term life premiums in the UK. This, um, is just about the least unique claim an insurance agent can make. (I don't know if it's true, and not being in the UK I can't check and don't care. But you have to understand that a claim like this on the site will not be considered unique content.) >We have negotiated discounted premiums that aren't available anywhere else with each of these 7 companies. >In all our pre launch trials, no one has beaten any quote we have given. This alone I would hope is reason enough for the site to be useful to your users. Unfortunately, this is not going to be something that editors will check. So it's not something that will be considered unique content. >I am aware that many so called insurance sites are just satellites which all point to the same few companies. The difference between this and a site that points to the same 7 companies ... will not be immediately apparent to the site reviewer. ------------------- There is a fundamental worldview difference here. In certain industries (like insurance and real estate), the dominant information model is "conceal and confuse". The primary players make most of their money simply off the fact that people CAN'T find the cheapest service. Their efforts to increase profitability are therefore primarily (if not exclusively) directed towards making it harder for people to find the cheapest service that fits their needs. They can then offer "services" that consist primarily of revealing the information they've gone to so much trouble to conceal in the first place. The ODP's model is "index the sum of human knowledge" -- that is, make it easier to find the important information. It is understandable -- and inevitable -- that dmoz.org does not fit comfortably within industry perception of acceptable or valuable content; and often, vice versa. Your website is caught in the crossfire, but from the ODP perspective serves as obfuscation, not the gods of knowledge or communication. The "knowledge content" is precisely what you've carefully concealed: WHICH insurance companies are offering coverage, and WHAT rates they offer. (I understand that your contract with the Lords of Mordor requires this.) What you are doing instead is acting as an information SINK (from the surfer's point of view) -- taking away information. This (again, from the information-model point of view) is not a feature but merely an aggravation to the original crime. And information sinks are properly regarded with great suspicion and abhorrence by editors because one information sink looks just like another. We can't tell whether there are 10 companies gathering separate lists of contacts, or just one company with 10 doorway pages. We can't tell whether it will be used for bringing plagues of salesmen down upon us, or for fraud or identity theft, or even for some honorable purpose. And in your defense, you start talking about your business model. The problem is not in YOUR business model but the WEBSITE'S information model. Finally, and lest you take this personally, you cannot possibly imagine the abhorrence of such pages that one would have have after spending hours hunting down hundreds of variations on the same two or three pages. (I don't HAVE to imagine it. If I heard about the death of some of the webmasters who create such pages, I would travel all day to stand in line to barf on their graves. I wouldn't even have to use a finger: just thinking about those sites is sufficient stimulus. And I'm not alone in this.) So we've discussed, and agreed, that the ODP's ultimate goal is not served, nor does it contribute to the enthusiasm of the editing community, to list "lead-generating" sites. At the end of the day, it's that simple.

Re: http://www.bdtzone.com/ rikmac1, it sounds like you are recommending what marketers call "branding" and what we call "using an alias to hide from the spam cops." "We do not like it, spam I am."

Re: http://www.bdtzone.com/ >>I am not mistaken can be an affiliate and get a listing as long as it has enough unique content regardless of who's product it sells. At this point, affiliate sales are not eligible for listing as shopping content, and they aren't any other kind of content. If a site is primarily about something else, affiliate links on it may not keep it from being listed. But a site that is primarily about "sales", "marketing", "promotioning", "branding", "different appearances", "audience targeting", "independent representativing", "advertising", or whatever else you want to call the practice of trying to persuade someone to buy something from someone else, isn't supposed to be listed. When we find one accidentally listed, we remove it. Nor do we care about your business model -- you may get paid per doorway page, or click, or fixed fee per sale, or your own markup, or you can give clicks away to your brother-in-law. You may ship from your warehouse or from Mars. You may have more dummy corporations than Enron, or list the same anonymous Tampa, Florida P.O. Box on every single site. You can collect via PayPal, Visa, or only use couriers with brass knuckles and baseball bats. It doesn't matter. I don't understand why this is so confusing.

Basically, since it is predominantly a shopping site, and not intrinsically educational (although to the right mind an apple can be educational....) start out by looking ONLY in Shopping categories. If you search for "piggy bank" or "piggy banks" at dmoz.org, it will pop up several possibilities. Is your product personalized? Is it ceramic? Otherwise it'll probably end up in "Home Decor". Alternatively, you could find a half dozen or so of your competitors (assuming there really is an industry that specializes in that) and propose a new category.

>Will that slow down the process and if so by how much? No, they are separate queues, reviewed by different groups of people.

You can try to contact the editor. I don't want to stop you, and in fact the submittal guidelines suggest it. It probably won't hurt. But it may not help, either: editors are volunteers, and we can't obligate them to answer e-mail. (In fact, it's generally not recommended: you know how the cliche--the schizoid axe-murderers and sea-lawyer stalkers in the website promotion business are ruining the reputation of the other 1%.)

WMW did well to send you here for specific questions about specific sites on the ODP: you can get unique access to ODP editors here. But for questions about other directories, or other ways of promoting websites, the other forums do better than resource-zone. (Which isn't hard -- resource-zone specializes in what its members can do well: the ODP.)

You might try posting in the "other languages" forum, where you may find an editor that understands your native language.

Waiting for review, along with amost 100 other sites. The usual caveat: resubmitting does nothing but push the site to the back of the line (for those editors that do sites in chronological order.)

"We categorize by topic, not by audience" Yes, a good way of putting it, and one which marketers almost invariably find impossible to accept or sympathise with. So we have, e.g., "fancy pen-and-pencil-set" retailers submitting their sites to Arts/Authors (well, authors use pencils, don't they?) Thank you for not doing this. There's nothing to keep you from creating separate pages for clients in different regions (and buying banner ads or yellow page listings pointing to them), but for knowledge-directory purposes, the unique content is your service -- and there's only one of it.

This is not the best place for getting recommendations on online commercial advertising. Check out http://webmasterworld.com or http://searchengineforums.com , which have people that use and discuss the full gamut of approaches. The recommendation here is: don't count on the ODP.

As to whether you will be rejected, I cannot say. As to whether permission to edit "Elbonia" includes its subcategories: yes, it does. And sites that should go in subcategories are acceptable. Two caveats: Often, categories with subcategories will be considered too large for a beginning editor. This may not be true for a small town -- with maybe 10 sites, and two subcategories simply because there is a @link farm at the state level. If you suggest sites for subcats, note which subcat you think they belong in -- this will tell the meta-editor that you understand what you were doing.

No, you can't necessarily assume that, this time it is true: apparently and plausibly enough, for insufficient content.

It's been listed since 2000. That doesn't seem to have slowed the submission rate at all. Did you hire one of those sleazy promoters who promise to "submit your site every month to two bazillion search engines?" And did you realize that (by ODP submittal guidelines) that could cause the site to be removed permanently, just for harassing the editors? If you have a trained monkey doing the automatic-submittal bit, please stop him. If someone was not seeing the site because they were looking on the wrong copy of the ODP, http://dmoz.org/ is the most up-to-date, but ODP search is not necessarily up-to-date. (This really isn't relevant for a 2-year-old listing, though.) The ODP has strict rules for titles of real estate sites, but you should still have been able to find the agen't listing through Google search on the real-estate-agent-name, any time for the last 30 months or so, and it would have pointed back to the proper category.

>>I just thought there might be an easy way for people like me, with non-commercial sites, who do not need traffic from "searchers", to get found, without people having to type in my http// in the address bar. You didn't think this one through. If there were an easy, QUICK way to do this, and there WEREN'T an easy way to detect commercial sites automatically (as there isn't) then the affiliate and doorway page creators would fill cram way full of content-free commercials before you could say "Viking song". So, there will never be an easy QUICK way. The easy SLOW way is to submit the site to the proper ODP category. With THAT, we can help you.

>The parent category does not have an editor. Is that why I am still waiting for a reply? It is not. The category editor (if there were one) would not review your application; a meta-editor will.

That's good to hear. (Just because we aren't homicide investigators doesn't mean we like murderers.)

Remember that we can often recognize copying; we can't usually tell which way the copying went. So we stay out of that business.

>>If only the sites picked by the editors are entered then it is as I said in another posting "a club" not a SE or DIR. No doubt for many people, that would be the goal and result of their editing. We try to select editors from people who think differently. I think we often succeed. [Later, guys. I'm tired of deleting spam. I think I'll go search for some good sites that were never submitted.]

>If there is a main office, the main site could probably get listed again in the appropriate regional section of ODP. Maybe--but only if there is local relevance. If you don't have walkin customers, and don't do service calls, and don't have information about hiring people, then there may not BE a local relevance. But if you create a "main business page" with links to all the various products AND each different domain has a link back to the main domain (so we can tell that the main domain is not just a link farm) then the main business page CAN BE considered for listing under the main "tickets" category (or the most specific category that covers the content. That is, we shouldn't penalize you for spreading the site over multiple domains (if done with no attempt to deceive or conceal company information) any more than we should reward you for the same thing.

>>What is the problem with them developing and submitting a site that sells golf tickets? Nothing. Nothing at all. What's the problem with ODP listing such sites? If everyone demanded a separate listing for every product they sold -- no matter whether it was a deeplink or a $6.00 domain name -- the directory would be unbuildable, and unusable so far as it was built. If we tolerate anyone doing this, all the other spammer lemmings (or is that lemmer spammings?) will jump in. So we don't go there. Website builders can still go wherever they want, and they can buy any advertising for any of it that they think would be profitable. But it's spam to the ODP, and trying to harass or trick ODP into propagating their spam for free -- is socially unacceptable and counterproductive.