Can I submit multiple pages from my site?

@pudsey

BUT, I was wondering if I could submit two or three other pages,

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No, please don't.

What would the added value and unique content i.e. of your travel insurance page be for the directory? None (don't take it personal). Not every page that adds value and unique content to your site (compared to the rest of its content) also adds value and unique content to the directory. Not every site out there adds value to the directory. In this case we would list the sites of the insurance companies you link to (provided they are listable), but not each and every page that has a link to them. If you operated your own, independant travel insurance company along with vacation rentals then the situation might be different.

You can, however, submit your main URL for review to a category like http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/L...ls/Directories/ if it's an appropriate one. The fact that you're listed in a Regional/UK category will not interfere with a review here. That doesn't mean your site will automatically be accepted, but it won't be considered spamming. Submitting deep links like the travel insurance or location specific ones will.

Nobody better than the site owner or the webmaster can make the difference - because the first knows exactly what his products are and the second because he/she has studied them thoroughly before creating the site, that's a least what I do.

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But in some ways -- work with me on this -- the webmaster or site owner is the least qualified person to determine where a site should be listed, or how much of the site should be included.

Why?

It is simple, because their perspective is completely different. They are focused on building a website and on driving as much traffic as possible to it. The ODP editors are focused on one thing: building a directory.

We are guided by three things:
-- the ODP editor guidelines (which the general public can see)
-- concensus opinions (which only member of the editing community can see)
-- experience and judgement (both of which come with thousands and tens of thousands of edits)

We really don't care how much traffic a a given site gets.

We really don't care what the business goals of a site are.

We are trying to list sites (not pages) that will help surfers find unique content. (This is one reason why you'll see so many site from places like Geocities listed -- many, many of those funky, ugly, horribly-designed sites have wonderfully unique content that is often quite narrowly-focused.)

We also generally don't want to get into the business of splitting hairs with regards to content. This is where the distinction between listing sites and listing pages comes into play. A real estate site, for example, that has a page on rock climbing will not get listed in example/rocks/climbing. It is not going to happen no matter how passionately the site owner or webmaster argues. That is not what the site is about.

We do make exceptions -- and this is where experience and judgement come into play -- if a site about shoes contains some really great information about the grafting of apple trees, we'll give it very serious consideration. We also make exceptions for encyclopedic sites that provide expert information on a variety of topics (but each separate deep link is independently evaluated -- no one gets an automatic free pass for all of their content).

There is always history to remember -- in the early days fo the directory, the policy with regards to deep links was much looser, it grows increasingly tighter now.

The point being, that the webmaster and site owner are not privvy to all of the facts, history and perspective that go into determining the applicability of directory deep links. This is why we try and discourage webmasers and site owners from submitting them -- as the vast majority of such submissions are simply time wasters for editors.

It is simple, because their perspective is completely different. They are focused on building a website and on driving as much traffic as possible to it. The ODP editors are focused on one thing: building a directory.

We are guided by three things:
-- the ODP editor guidelines (which the general public can see)
-- concensus opinions (which only member of the editing community can see)
-- experience and judgement (both of which come with thousands and tens of thousands of edits)

We really don't care how much traffic a a given site gets.

We really don't care what the business goals of a site are.

Argh I was at the end of a long answer to this when I was interrupted. But I probably hit a key (or one of the cats walked on the keyboard) because when I came back everything had disappeared. Now it's too late, I must complete a job before dinner, but I want to say at least one thing. Your are right, yes, yes, no problem on this. However, I did not refer to traffic nor to business goals. I remember mentioning that I spoke as a surfer not as a site owner or designer, and as surfer I should like to receive complete information. That's all. If you are building your directory just for the sake of it, there's nothing that I can say, you are master of your time, but if ODP aims at providing information, in that case, well, allowing a site to submit to a number of directories should not be a rare event. Besides this, I heard/read that ODP is providing data to Google and the rest. It either gives information free of charge, and in that case I make a deep reverence and take off my hat, or in exchange for something, perhaps money. In that case I strongly doubt that Google - and the rest - would pay for information on original geocities sites only, because their surfers who are interested in business - I think that many of them are, but that's only my opinion - would immediately go somewhere else. So ODP has to provide information on business and should provide it as complete as possible. My doubt on this was that you cannot find specialists in every single matter, and that the editors may overlook the difference, say between a indoor swimming pool and an outdoor one that have in common only part of the name and the fact that they contain water. As for the rest, they are completely different, two unique contents. I am using this example, it's safe (the client is not publishing the site), but there are others and that's why we are discussing here.
Thank you for your attention,
Valeria

Item #1 in our Social Contract ( http://dmoz.org/socialcontract.html ) says:

The Open Directory Will Remain 100% Free

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Item #2 says:

We license our content as free with attribution back to the ODP.

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"Google and the rest" get to use our data for free. The only requirement is that they give us credit. Period.

venividi said:

as surfer I should like to receive complete information.

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As a surfer, it is important that you understand the difference between a search engine and a directory. The complete information is available in both, but you need to know how to extract it.

If for example, you want to look through a list of all cutlery sites available, regardless of whether or not other products are sold on those sites, you should use a search engine.

If you wished to look through a list of sites whose primary focus was cutlery, then you would look in a specific cutlery category in a directory. e.g. http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Home_and_Garden/Kitchen_and_Dining/Cutlery/ . Similarly, if you wanted to look at sites offering only china, you could look in http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Home_and_Garden/Kitchen_and_Dining/China/ . However, if you wanted to look at sites that offered both cutlery and china, but still focussed only on kitchen and dining, you would need to look one level up in http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Home_and_Garden/Kitchen_and_Dining/ . And if you really just wanted to look at sites that offered everything for the home, from cutlery to bed linen, then you should try one level higher.

A directory still presents a complete set of information, but in a different fashion than a search engine.

Our goal is to classify sites into the single most appropriate topical category. We consider listing deeplinks in other topics only when that topic is in a totally different area and the content for the topic adds a lot of value to the category. A different way of thinking about it is that usually those topics could be (and many times are) their own websites independent of the main site. If the topic is so closely related to the main topic that it wouldn't make sense to separate it, then likely a deeplink isn't warranted.

In that case, as I said - and please don't take this as an ironical answer as your quotes seem to me, it isn't - my compliments and as the Italian say 'vi faccio tanto di cappello'.

Valeria

@ senox

Many thanks for your feedback. I realise the travel insurance listing would be little effect to your directory, considering the companies would more than likely already be listed in DMOZ.

I have already submitted to the category you suggested in August 2003, and have being told that it's unlikely to be listed because my website is being treated as a directory, even though the website is still unreviewed.

I will keep a check on it's progress, and will not waste editors time by submitting any pages.

Thanks again
Darren