6 Months No Listing - Home Improvement/Real Estate

Two items that I need help with (we are a home improvement and real estate oriented site - detailed description at the bottom of post):

Placed In The Wrong Category:
** www.servicemagic.com is listed in the DMOZ directory but we've been pigeonholed into a geo specific category that represents only one of the 480 services we offer (home: home improvement: climate control). We should be listed, given our breadth of services, relevant content, etc, one level higher in the directory structure (home: home improvement). I've been trying for over 6 months to make this happen with no success (this is the first time I've posted in resource-zone so hopefully this will be the solution – I’ve heard good things about the responsiveness in the resource-zone)

Not Listed At All:
** I cannot get www.servicemagic.com/realesate listed in the directory at all. Once again, given our national coverage, I think that we should be listed under Business=>Real Estate=>Directories. This is an entirely separate business vertical and obviously, after review of the site, is a stand-alone entity.

Company profile: www.servicemagic.com is a nationwide network of pre-screened and customer rated home service professionals. We have everything from maids to home builders in every major market. A new but separate division of ServiceMagic is www.servicemagic.com/realestate - a screened/rated nationwide network of real estate agents.

I would appreciate any help or feedback that the forum may be able to provide. Ideally, I would like to get listed as suggested above. Please advise.

Re: 6 Months No Listing - Home Improvement/Real Es

(1) FTR it's servicemagicinc.com that is listed in the Climate Control category, not servicemagic.com

(2) You've never submitted an update request asking to move the site from there to another category -- all I see is an update request to change the URL to yet another mirror (that request was deleted, BTW). Maybe your efforts over the last 6 months have just involved emailing editors? Oh, wait -- I see that you've submitted the servicemagic.com URL several times to the parent category rather than requesting an update of the existing listing. Gotcha.

(3) While I agree that your site doesn't belong in the category it is currently in, I'm not sure it really belongs in the parent category either. You have home improvement articles but your primary purpose, I'm sure you'd agree, is to offer up your lists of contractors, not the supplemental articles you provide. Because of that, I would have said it should be in http://dmoz.org/Business/Construction_and_Maintenance/Directories/North_America/United_States except that you don't actually have a directory of contractors on your site -- people have to register and give all kinds of information before you'll email them a list of contractors in their area (at least, I presume you actually will -- I didn't feel like registering in order to verify that). That makes it really difficult to judge the value of the content on the site -- because really there isn't much that we can see without waiting for something to be emailed to us. Pretty much makes you a lead generator site with a library of articles.

(4) RE: servicemagic.com/realestate -- again, you don't actually offer any actually content on the site (users have to register and wait to have a list of agents sent to them). Again, essentially lead generator services and this deeplink isn't likely to be accepted. At least the home improvement part has some value-added stuff like the articles (though I can't judge their uniqueness)....the real estate section is strictly lead generation.

Thank you for your feedback. I appreciate your position but have a couple thoughts/questions. As you noted, we do have 1,500 unique pieces of content for the user and with both our real estate and home contractor matching solution, we are adding a lot of value from the users perspective - our network of contractors and real estate agents have been pre-screened for licensing, insurance and clean credit and legal histories. In both cases, we are operating a very legitimate business that adds a lot of value for all those involved and I don't understand why that should be held against us with respect to open directory submission. I've reviewed the lists of approved companies and there are many that perform the exact same service included - homegain.com, ziprealty.com, lendingtree.com, et al. What would you advise with respect to next steps? I think that I should be able to have our classification changed for ServiceMagic.com to the parent category where it belongs and have the opportunity to list our real estate site - granted, it doesn't stand alone on a seperate domain, but why should that be held against us? We could go out and buy one tomorrow and host site there. I'm not trying to dupe anyone, I just want fair representation of our two seperate business units within the diretory and given that our competitors have been approved, I believe that we should be as well. Please advise and thank you greatly for your time.

Re: 6 Months No Listing - Home Improvement/Real Es

I think that I should be able to have our classification changed for ServiceMagic.com to the parent category where it belongs....

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You can try. As I said, you've submitted zero update requests for that so it isn't surprising that you've had no response.

...and have the opportunity to list our real estate site - granted, it doesn't stand alone on a seperate domain, but why should that be held against us?

Click to expand...

The fact that it isn't on a standalone domain means nothing. Absolutely nothing. As I said, you are not a Real Estate directory so you would never be listed in the category you want. Judging the site on the content that is actually visible on it with regards to real estate, you have nothing. I don't doubt that you are a legitimate business offering a service to your customers but we can't see any relevent content on your site to back that up. So, from an ODP perspective you have insufficient unique content to list (content that you may or may not have behind the scenes doesn't count since we can't see it unless we fill out the form).