Can't get my site updated!

I have one site listed in one category in DMOZ. Our website moved and I have submitted the new URL to DMOZ more times than I can count over the last year. I have never heard anything from them. I've filled out the contact forms on their website and even filed a couple of abuse reports. I have never been acknowledged! I'm so frustrated I can't stand it!

The category is: Business: Industrial Goods and Services: Machinery and Tools: Cutting and Machining: Cutting Machinery

My company name is InnerLogic, Inc.

If you will read the guidelines for site submittal and abuse reports, you will realize that what you are doing is called "spamming." You should not expect spamming to work. And as for acknowledgment, you must understand that we hardly ever even reply to normal submissions, let alone spammers.

If, rather than abusing the abuse report system or sitting around fuming about lack of response from your spam, you had done the "internet thing" when the site moved, the URL would have already been updated. I can guarantee it.

What's the "internet thing?" Simple. Just have your server return a "301 permanent redirect" status for the old URL. Our automatic link checker (robozilla) would have flagged that for personal attention, and an editor would have visited the site and made the update.

I usually make a practice of taking care of Update URL requests whenever I see them, but they aren't distinguished from ADD URL requests on our summary screens, so an "update URL" request can take as long as any other "Add URL" request (i.e. whenever an editor happens to volunteer to do it). Robozilla-flagged sites are always cleared out within a two or three weeks. (Robozilla is run every few months, and a run was completed recently.)

I personally don't view what I did as spamming. I updated my URL, which is the only suggested means on the "update url" link. Nothing about redirection was mentioned, or I would have done that. I waited much, much longer than the "2 weeks" required to update, and I filled out the form again. After trying this a couple of times and filling out the "contact us" form and still hearing nothing, I filed an abuse report, as I felt like maybe the editor of the group was a corrupt competitor! If the "update url" link had suggested that it may take over a year to get updated, I wouldn't have pursued the other options. I'm certainly not a spammer; I would just like the correct url to be attached to my website. What do you suggest I do at this point?

You should get a good webmaster who would take of these things for you, and and would take care of creating such things as robots.txt files so that search engines [not ODP] would not keep indexing old content.

>Nothing about redirection was mentioned, or I would have done that.

Sorry, but the ODP Submittal policies are not a good place to look for basic website administration advice. There are lots of other places where you can find that kind of information.

However, we hear this question enough...it may be time to add some more text to the submittal policies, because many webmasters (probably most) are not devious or vicious enough to try to steal someone else's ODP listing this way -- so it may not occur to them that WE have to think about it, because a few webmasters ARE that vicious. So we have to verify all "update URL" requests, just as we review for "Suggest URL."

I'll bring that up in the internal forums for future additions to the policies.

Hutcheson...thanks for listening. You are right, I'm not being devious in any way. I simply wanted my site changed. It would have saved me a lot of time and frustration if I had been advised to redirect. I simply changed the old page to say "our website has moved. Click here to access our new page". I didn't want to redirect, because I wanted people to write down our new address, that's all. Thanks again!

hutcheson:

Your positive attitude towards webmasters is really appreciated.
I would like to suggest one more point for your internal discussion. If you think it is appropreate, you can discuss this one as well.
When the webmaster submits a site again after waiting for several weeks, instead of putting the web site LAST in the queue, a message can be displayed that the site is already present in waiting queue for this category and it cannot be resubmitted.
Gimpsy.com (http://www.gimpsy.com/) does exactly that and it is very useful.
OR atleast on the submission page, post this warning that resbumission will put your web site to the end of queue.
The submission page suggests a wait time of three weeks, when nothing happens after three weeks, webmaster's like me, who don't know this policy end up submitting again and pushed at the end of the queue.
If a submission status is shown as gimpsy does, then lots of editor's time can also be saved who respond on site status on this board.

Thanks

I've looked at your site, and what you've done is strictly kosher and adequate, once an editor looks at the submittal request. I agree with you about Javascript and/or Meta-Refresh redirecting -- I'd rather have time to cut and paste the new URL -- but if there's no intent to deceive then we're not going to complain about which way people do it.

The advantage of the 301 is that robozilla editors get HIGH priority attention (which is good), and Update requests get lost in the mass of "Add" requests, which is, um, a less-than-optimal feature of the editors' dashboard.

We haven't been mentioning the "301" trick because it's not ODP-specific (search engines like Google will observe it and Do The Right Thing) and because it's not absolutely necessary (an editor will probably notice the "we've moved" link, but probably won't actually see the 301.) and because it's not always possible (some people don't have that kind of access to their server) and, um, because it hadn't occurred to us to mention it.

danis, things like that have been bandied about in the forums some. My impression is that there are changes planned for the unreviewed database, which may facilitate giving more automatic information.

But in general the problem is less problematic, and more complex, than you're assuming though. Remember there isn't any queue except what the editor imposes, and many editors don't review first-submitted sites first: and if they did, one possible three-week delay is not a big deal, considering that most of our licensees only update once a month anyway.

Also, just because a submittal isn't waiting in a category doesn't mean that it should be submitted there.

And given a choice between you resubmitting a site over and over again before it's been reviewed, and resubmitting a site over again every time immediately after it's been rejected or moved elsewhere, we'd LOTS prefer the former: it doesn't waste OUR time, and it serves you just as well.

Or, to put it another way, the current setup isn't causing us any problems that the proposal would solve, and might even introduce problems that we aren't currently having.

What I WOULD like to see is some message like this:

"The URL you submitted, xxx.mycom.com, is already listed in Business/Companies/Impersonal/Insignificant. Are you suggesting it should be ()
() Also listed in Business/Companies/Really_Really_Big also
() Moved to Business/Companies/Really_Really_Big
Please explain your reasons, considering our guidelines [link] and the list of "Common reasons to link a site twice" [link]

Conversely, as an editor, "this site is also waiting review in Business/Companies/Big, Business/Companies/Other, Business/Companies/Small, Business/Corporations/Financial,
Business/Companies/Bankrupt, Business, and Business/Companies. [click to review]

But as I say, I think all of this will have to wait till the next round of database re-engineering is finished.

Thanks for a detailed response hutcheson. This gives a perspective from the "other side".
I hope my site will be listed before your next database update and all I have to do is just wait and not resubmit because now I know that resubmitting puts a newer date stamp.

Thanks again.
daniS