Description for site www.absolutebarcelona.com

Hi everyone,

I wanted to ask for some feedback on my site's description and category I think is most appropriate to submit to. I wanted to get it right so that I dont waste any editor's time.

This is what I came up with.

TITLE:
Absolute Barcelona

DESCRIPTION:
A business directory of companies and professionals in Barcelona, other features include online booking, message board and classified ads.

CATEGORY:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/Spain/Autonomous_Communities/Catalonia/Barcelona/Barcelona_City/

Think this one is most logical for my site to fit in.


Other option would be:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/Spain/Autonomous_Communities/Catalonia/Barcelona/Barcelona_City/Business_and_Economy/

This one is about business and my site, more than just business, it provides for a community so I thought the first one would be more appropriate.


I would really appreciate the feedback on this. I don't want to be one of those that just submit their sites with crazy descriptions, wasting a lot of resources and people's time.

Best wishes,
Greg

Thanks for at least asking.

A couple of obvious things stand out to me (and I don't have time to look at the site right now, I'm doing it purely on what you have written)...

Since you are suggesting a site to a Barcelona category and since you have the word "Barcelona" in your title, you don't need it in the description - replace it with "the city".

Also, you say "online booking" - online booking of what?

Others may care to look at the site and give you more guidance.

Hope this helps.

Since we are not going to craft your description within this forum, after all, the final description is ultimately up to the reviewing editor, I think that if you incorporate the changes alucard noted, your title and description are good enough to be submitted, and will not hurt you in terms of the editor seeing it and not wanting to be bothered.

Hey First of all thank you for your reply (was amazingly fast )!!

About "the city" that sounds better, will change this.

The online booking engine is for hotels, cars and flights. Thought it may get too long with that, so I omitted it. Will add that then:


DESCRIPTION:
A business directory of companies and professionals in the city, other features include online booking (cars, hotels and flights), message board and classified ads.



How is this modified description?
About the category, would you say the first one is the most appropriate? Or do you suggest I submit to that category with this description and the editor can then move it to more appropriate category? Is this what you mean, spectregunner?

I think your title and description are submittable.

The forum rules have recently been clarified, and we are no longer allowed to assist submitters in determining the single best category for their site. You will need to exercise your best judgement in that matter, understanding that the ultimate decision is up to the listing editor or editors.

So, as they say in sports: go for it!

Quote - The forum rules have recently been clarified, and we are no longer allowed to assist submitters in determining the single best category for their site. You will need to exercise your best judgement in that matter, understanding that the ultimate decision is up to the listing editor or editors.

Can you point me to where that has been clarified at?

There is one important point here. You mention online booking. Is that actually a unique service you provide yourself, or is that merely promotional links to someone else's online reservation system?

This is a very important point. You can place whatever ads you want on your site, but if the editor gets the impression that your primary purpose is to deliver ads, then your submittal is dead. Instantly.

How can you give such a fatal impression? By claiming content that you do not have, you tell us that you don't have any content worth mentioning -- you have to mention someone else's content instead.

We can get that impression either from your suggested description, or from the material that is most prominently featured on your page.

Our guideline for most sites is something like "if you can recognize and ignore the promotional material [ads, affiliate links, sponsor logos, whatever], then do so, and describe just the site's unique content.

Because travel reservation affiliate-doorway spam is such a massive problem for us (and for anyone trying to use the internet to find real content on any geographic area), the rules are a bit different. Think of it like this. If a perfect stranger can't navigate past your travel-reservation stuff to find demonstrably unique, relevant, and high-quality informational material within 60 seconds, then kill. Instantly.

That's a high standard, and I don't know that I've seen a site yet that passed it. Whether it's an overwhelming desire to maximize the number of promotional items per square centimeter of screen space, or brain-dead web design from the Baroque-cathedral-stone-carving school of design layout, or a thoughtless imitation of all that is worst in the zillions of competitive affiliate doorway spammer pages, -- it doesn't matter. 59.5 seconds review, and that is including whatever time it takes to track down the identity of the actual content-provider through the layers of deception and concealment that most of them provide as a matter of course.

So before you submit, go back to the site. Make sure the home page features your original content prominently. Make sure you explicitly identify the source of your affiliate links -- that will save you 30-90 seconds of review time, that you didn't have to spare. And DON'T mention your advertising content or hired sponsors in your suggested description.

Good points made

Hutcheson, you made some very important and good points there. I think that it would do a lot of people good, to read them!! If I speak for my site, then no this is not just links to any other site but an integrated reservation system from one of the big suppliers so basically you could still say an affiliate in a way.

Now quite honestly this is not my main focus. That added service is intended to be useful for the user in the sense that he/she can get a general impression of the costs (hotel, car, flight) before they come. I don't want people to visit my site, explicitly for this!!!

My main aim of the site is to offer information ("cleaned" and categorized) on companies and professionals located in the city. An online Yellow Pages so to speak, for international people who are looking for an english doctor, a french lawyer, etc. This is my aim, to help people find what they are looking for. Again I stress, it is foreigners (residents or visitors) that I am aiming at because there is no such service for them. I have lived here many years and felt this was lacking, thus the idea

So to turn back to Hutcheson's point. Would it be best to keep the description to this?

"A business birectory of the city aimed at international residents and visitors."

I must say, I am not (ego-)picky about my description.. I don't want to fool anyone or trick anyone into visiting my site by saying it is the best, but just proceed according to the rules and let people know whats expecting them and especially not waste an editor's time. So the other extra content (forums, classified ads, articles, practical info, etc.) for all I care can be omitted in the description, if that is what you are suggesting, Hutcheson? I put the extra info to show that those features are also part of the site.

One last point: About the bunch of travel related affiliate sites that spam you guys or try to trick users into visits is quite annoying, even for me. One of the top websites for this city (in terms of search engine results) has got nearly 250 other domain names which pretend to be different pages but are exactly the same one!! I understand this is annoying if somebody submits sites like that, and you can see it is annoying for me. Here I am with a genuine idea, trying to provide useful information and find myself amongst a mass of clone sites

This is why I value the ODP so much, because it has guidelines to come in, which in that sense, Search Engines don't. The SE don't realize that there is a site with nearly 250 other domains helping to promote its content, but you guys do, and this is why I use the ODP more than the SE's for serious searches and that is why I plan to submit my site here, because I think this is where justice is done in some way. A place where there is much more organization than on SEs.

Oh well, nevermind.. Let me get back on focus. Can somebody please let me know if it best to just keep the description to above or do I need to mention more? (Not that the editor thinks I'm hiding stuff?!)

All feedback is greatly appreciated!!

OK, let me take a shot at THAT description. It doesn't represent the site well. You say it's AIMED at somebody. ODP editors don't care who it's aimed at, and frankly, the people whom it's aimed at either don't care or will be insulted. The question, the only question is: what information does it have? What is its CONTENT (not its PURPOSE or its TARGET or its VICTIM or its GOAL?) We don't care why you did the site (exception: as I mentioned, if it seems primarily to drive commercial traffic to other sites, then we don't want to list it.) But we care what's on the site.

How is the CONTENT different from other business directories we list? Does it focus on a particular kind of business, or a particular kind of information about all businesses, or a unique way of organizing information? If you can say something about that in a few words, the our ODP DESCRIPTION (AIMED AT the surfer who has a choice) will be able to bring people who want that information -- because THEY want that information, not because you think they are in some marketroid-demographic-group that you think might be affected by it.

This may be a difficult way for you to look at the site -- but it will be the way we try to look at it.

If you can't come up with anything more than that, we'll take the submittal with whatever description you give, then we'll write up whatever we think is best. If you can help us with the description, that's great: if you can't, then we'll merely be thankful for your help finding a good URL and the right category for it (assuming you found the right category, of course -- if not, we'll just be thankful for your help finding a good URL.)

The more help you give, the more efficiently we can build the directory. But there's no "minimum amount of help" before we deign to accept it.

I'm not sure if this is relevant or not, but there is another thread at: http://resource-zone.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14516 that has some pertinent information relating to travel sites, and describes how someone desecrated their own site to the point that we now no longer list it.

Dear Giz, thanks for the tip. I have just read the thread. I can confidently say that my site is not on that level at all, and even if this is as interesting (profit-wise) as the guy claims, I am not interested in this. I offer it on my site as additional service but my focus is on providing people with information about local companies and professionals - that's the site's core!

Dear Hutcheson, thanks for your tip too: I see that saying who it is aimed at is not what should be described (especially because it also may offend people not mentioned ) Therefore, focusing on my site's content I think the following description would be the most appropriate to submit (then obviously, the fine tuning I leave up to the editor:

A business directory of companies and professionals in the city listed by category, other features include message board, classified ads, articles and online booking (cars, hotels and flights).

I think this is Mooozila Do you consider this to be "ripe" now for submitting?

A business directory of companies and professionals in the city listed by category, other features include message board, classified ads, articles and online booking (cars, hotels and flights).

Click to expand...

But... but... but... the site does not offer online booking of anything. Perhaps you should re-read Hutcheson's post and try again.

I want to repeat one thing, because it seems to have been overlooked, and it may be the most important part of what I said. If you claim the site contains online booking, and it contains only advertisements about other sites' online booking, then you've started out on a very wrong foot. The editor will naturally suppose that everything else you claim to have is copied, plagiarized, linked, or otherwise non-original and non-unique. That is not the line of enquiry that you want to impose on your reviewer!

But that only hurts you, it doesn't hurt us. And other than that, what you give is not at all bad to start from. As an editor I'd be happy to see such a suggested description. I'd strip out "in the city" (after all, if it weren't about "the city" it wouldn't be in "the city" category) and the bit about online booking (per previous discussion); I'd also remove "other features include" (it really doesn't add anything but otiosity to the description) and I'd probably remove either "business" or "companies and professionals" (whichever one I decided was less informative); I'd remove "listed by category" (um, that's what a directory does by definition). I'd think about ADDING a few words about what kind of articles they were.

But really, that's a HELPFUL description, even if it isn't up to the wordcrafting standards that I like to aspire to. It's a good outline of the features of the site that I should make sure to review.

Of course, the final description is solely the editor's responsibility. If there's only one pizzley article, or hardly any classified ads, I might not mention those things, and I might mention something else that I hadn't seen on any other similar site.

Now I am completely confused. I don't know who has looked at the site and who hasn't (out of the ones answering my posts) but old_crone saying that my site doesn't offer online booking is just very confusing.

If you claim the site contains online booking, and it contains only advertisements about other sites' online booking, then you've started out on a very wrong foot.

Click to expand...

I have a page on my site which is called hotel reservation. This has a white-branded booking engine integrated from some third-party travel engine. Now I don't know what this qualifies as (link, affiliate, non-unique...) but if it's causing me trouble I can remove it.

I have the dilemna of do I mention it or not? If I do then it may be seen as pretending to have something I don't personally offer, because someone considers it a link to publicity. And if I dont mention it then it could be considered omitting important information. I would just appreciate knowing what description to use, to make sure I start on a good foot and not waste an editor's time (trying to find features or changing descriptions, etc.)...

I think if you go back and re-read the thread and the postings from the editors you will find that all your questions have been addressed. If there is a specific question that you still have or an answer that you are unclear about then please repost and we will do our best to answer you. Thanks.

Hi The helper... As I mention I am not clear about what final veredict is on this matter. Do I mention the booking engine or not in my description?

Hutcheson was very clear in what he wrote.

The booking engine isn't yours, isn't on your site, and therefore you should not mention it. You don't offer bookings. You advertise someone elses.

We describe the content of your site (not list the adverts), therefore we only describe what is actually on your site. We do not describe what you link to, therefore the bookings bit of the description goes in the bit bucket.

You can have the link to the booking system on your site. That isn't a problem. We review the content (the stuff that is ON your site), but if the content is deemed purely a magnet to draw people towards the third party stuff (like the bookings) then the listing is denied.

If the site has useful content, that is unique (i.e. it cannot be got from any other site) then you might get listed if the "quality" is sufficient.

Ok perfect this is what I needed to know. Thanks to everyone for the kind (and fast!!) help!

I was wondering about the submission status of my site
(Submitted approximately 2 years ago).
I would appreciate if somebody could orient me on this?

Please read the FAQ.
We don't do site status anymore.