Both My Sites Removed for No Reason!

cnc85 · Dec 17, 2006

My sites have been running for two and a half years and have been listed in DMOZ for over 2 year, and have remained the same sites for that period, providing the same service and then all of a sudden they BOTH are gone? I can't help but feel that something is up? What can I do about this - I don't want to resubmit my sites and wait 3 years for them to be added, and I'd like an explanation as to why they were removed.

So what can I do?

hutcheson · Dec 17, 2006

The reason would be "in the editor's judgment, it would have been a violation of the editors' guidelines to list the sites." The editors' guidelines are, of course, public.

You might review your sites with this in mind:

1. Are they related IN ANY WAY, such as being based on the knowledge of the same person, or being commerce sites offering services of the same entity, or being advertising sites operating to the financial benefit of the same entity, or in any other way? If so, submitting both would be a violation of the submittal policies, and according to the submittal policies, removal of both is the prescribed action.

2. Do the sites primarily exist to promote the commercial offerings of some other entity -- which also offers goods or services via other websites? If so, the "duplicate content" rule is obviously involved.

3. Is there a SIGNIFICANT amount of authoritative information available on these sites and not available elsewhere on the web? is it easy to find on the website? is it easy to distinguish from other content (such as advertising or non-unique information) on the site? If the answer is not "yes" across the board here, the unique content rule very likely applies.

You know what (if anything) you know, that nobody else knows, that you published on your website. There's really nothing we can EVER tell you about that, because YOU KNOW that, and WE generally do NOT know everything about that. And the explanation basically always lies in what you already know.

You're welcome to ask your friends to review the ODP guidelines and your website, with "unique relevant information" in mind, to see how an editor would have approached the site. But it's basically never a good idea for an editor to get between a demanding webmaster and the guidelines. (The editor is responsible solely to the community and the guidelines.)

And you are free to re-suggest one of the sites: it is, however, in my experience, vanishingly unlikely that it would be re-listed: and my recommendation is always to spend that three years not "waiting" but "doing what you'd do if you expected the it not to be relisted."

You're free to re-suggest both sites, if you want to make sure that the reason they aren't listed is the submittal policy. But I do not recommend that approach.

cnc85 · Dec 18, 2006

hutcheson said:
The reason would be "in the editor's judgment, it would have been a violation of the editors' guidelines to list the sites." The editors' guidelines are, of course, public.

You might review your sites with this in mind:

1. Are they related IN ANY WAY, such as being based on the knowledge of the same person, or being commerce sites offering services of the same entity, or being advertising sites operating to the financial benefit of the same entity, or in any other way? If so, submitting both would be a violation of the submittal policies, and according to the submittal policies, removal of both is the prescribed action.

2. Do the sites primarily exist to promote the commercial offerings of some other entity -- which also offers goods or services via other websites? If so, the "duplicate content" rule is obviously involved.

3. Is there a SIGNIFICANT amount of authoritative information available on these sites and not available elsewhere on the web? is it easy to find on the website? is it easy to distinguish from other content (such as advertising or non-unique information) on the site? If the answer is not "yes" across the board here, the unique content rule very likely applies.

You know what (if anything) you know, that nobody else knows, that you pbublished on your wesite. There's really nothing we can EVER tell you about that, because YOU KNOW that, and WE generally do NOT know everything about that. And the explanation basically always lies in what you already know.

You're welcome to ask your friends to review the ODP guidelines and your website, with "unique relevant information" in mind, to see how an editor would have approached the site. But it's basically never a good idea for an editor to get between a demanding webmaster and the guidelines. (The editor is responsible solely to the community and the guidelines.)

And you are free to re-suggest one of the sites: it is, however, in my experience, vanishingly unlikely that it would be re-listed: and my recommendation is always to spend that three years not "waiting" but "doing what you'd do if you expected the it not to be relisted."

You're free to re-suggest both sites, if you want to make sure that the reason they aren't listed is the submittal policy. But I do not recommend that approach.

In response to point 1: I owned both the sites - so they did link to eachother, but both my sites linked tons of other sites and thousands of sites linked back to my sites so I can't see that being the problem.

In response to point 2: Like I said both these sites have been running for year, and thye don't sell anything, and the only advertising they have on them is Google AdSense - and last time I checked I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only site out there with Google AdSense, So I'm going to assume that this wasn't the issue either.

In response to point 3: I don't post duplicate content on my sites, any articles that I write for my sites are written by me. Plus one of the sites I'm referring to was a forum with over 16,000 members and over 185,000 posts - so I'm going to say YES I had significant amounts of unique, original and useful content.

And I know that you DON'T KNOW everything about my sites, but that is why I'm so annoyed because I DO KNOW everything about my sites and can't for the life of my understand why my sites have been removed! I mean in one of the sections, the "Forums" section of the DMOZ category I'm referring to, there are maybe 30 forums listed, many of them are just sub section of other sites mind you, but my site is larger, more prominent and more relevant in that section than any of those listed with the exception of maybe one or two.

So like I said - for the life of me I can't understand why my site was removed. And now you are telling me that I should just sit back and wait another 3 years for it to be re-listed, after working hard on it for the past 3 years. That makes no sense. My site wasn't a tenth of the site that it was 3 years ago anmd it have been reoved, with current trends and another 3 years of development my site should perminently banned or something.

hutcheson · Dec 18, 2006

OK, there's a fundamental difference between "link to each other" (which many sites might do, and which is the question you answered) and "be related to each other" (which is most often but not always because the information comes immediately or ultimately from the same source).

And there's a difference, a big difference, a WORLD of difference between "original writing" and "unique information." "Unique" doesn't mean "original", and "original doesn't mean "unique". And "writing" is not "information", and for that matter "information" doesn't have to be in "writing". I asked about unique information. You talked about original writing.

Finally, the question isn't and never was whether those two websites duplicated EACH OTHER'S content -- even if they didn't they'd still be "related sites". THAT question was whether the INFORMATION contained in that "original writing" could be found ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE WEB. Which is again an entirely different question.

One other possibility that might be considered (not that, as I said, you eliminated any of the possibilities I was considering) is that you blocked our link checker (robozilla) and it moved both links back to unreviewed until a human could check them manually.

cnc85 · Dec 20, 2006

OK, there's a fundamental difference between "link to each other" (which many sites might do, and which is the question you answered) and "be related to each other" (which is most often but not always because the information comes immediately or ultimately from the same source).

I don't really know what you are getting at there, but the two sites that were removed are completely different sites with completely difference functions, with completely different information, providing completely difference services and functions, but on the same topic.

And there's a difference, a big difference, a WORLD of difference between "original writing" and "unique information." "Unique" doesn't mean "original", and "original doesn't mean "unique". And "writing" is not "information", and for that matter "information" doesn't have to be in "writing". I asked about unique information. You talked about original writing.

Well the articles that I wrote were VERY unique with different spin on them to anything else really found on the maintstream sites, and they were 100% original as well - so my articles were original and unique.

Finally, the question isn't and never was whether those two websites duplicated EACH OTHER'S content -- even if they didn't they'd still be "related sites". THAT question was whether the INFORMATION contained in that "original writing" could be found ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE WEB. Which is again an entirely different question.

Like I said above the sites' content is unique and original. Plus every other site listed DMOZ presently are essentially the exact same information regurgitated onto a different site with a different name run by a different bunch of people.

One other possibility that might be considered (not that, as I said, you eliminated any of the possibilities I was considering) is that you blocked our link checker (robozilla) and it moved both links back to unreviewed until a human could check them manually.

I highly doubt this because I don't mess around with things like robot.txt or anything like that - and it's not like I have changed the site that much in the last month or so.

brmehlman · Dec 20, 2006

The TOS of this forum forbids mention of specific sites for a reason: To avoid just this sort of pointless bickering about whether a site should be listed.

By not actually naming your site, you have managed to seem to comply with the letter of the TOS while egregiously violating its spirit.

Thread closed, please don't start another one on this topic.

hutcheson · Dec 20, 2006

Two sites from the SAME source on the SAME general topic ARE, definitely, ABSOLUTELY considered "related sites" for the purpose of the Submittal Policies.

Both My Sites Removed for No Reason!

cnc85

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hutcheson

cnc85

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hutcheson

cnc85

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brmehlman

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hutcheson