Difference between a site and a deeplink

Can anybody explain what the difference between a site and a deeplink is?

Is an own domain name a prerequisite for a site or can multiple sites be located under the same domain name?

Or is the differentiator perhaps another one: one company or individual is not allowed to have several sites (with different domain names) if these sites are somehow related?

Or is the differentiator perhaps another one: one company or individual is not allowed to have several sites (with different domain names) if these sites are somehow related?

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Basically that sums it up very well, apart from the fact that we don't distinguish between domain names and links on the same site. Traditionally, the second is the case (One company, one domain, lots of "deeplinks" possible to their content), so we are talking about "deeplinks".

If you haven't already done so, you might find a look at http://dmoz.org/guidelines/site-specific.html#deeplinks helpfull as well.
[Added] Our guidelines link to http://dmoz.org/newsletter/2001May/deeplink.html which gives some more details.

A site would be the main URL www.mysite.com.
A deeplink would be www.mysite.com/bannanas that goes to a page on your site.

In some cases, listing a deeplink is appropriate, as in:
http://www.pondshowcase.com/ where listing the deeplink:
http://www.pondshowcase.com/Phyllis/index.shtml is perfectly ok for that particular category because it shows the user a personal water garden, which is what that category is about, so it is unique content that would be helpful to a web surfer looking for that information.

Or is the differentiator perhaps another one: one company or individual is not allowed to have several sites (with different domain names) if these sites are somehow related?

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Correct. If someone is trying to get more than one listing about the same content by being tricky, in order to get an unfair advantage over the competition (which happens often), it's considered spamming and will be dealt with accordingly.

If you're talking about one website hosting pages for individual businesses, or as many District educational sites do by hosting the individual schools in their district, that would be a different type of scenario, I believe.

The problem with deeplinks like that, is that if the main url goes down, so do all of the deeplinks.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.

Added - In my personal experience, as an editor, I prefer a business have their own url, but, I have listed such deeplinks for individual businesses from a main url. It takes more work because I have to make sure the deeplinked business doesn't also have a url of its own. (which would make that particular deeplink spamming, which I wouldn't list)

I'll sometimes do this for a small town that's just trying to get their businesses on the Internet map where they can compete.

Ok, understood. I actually already found the page at http://dmoz.org/newsletter/2001May/deeplink.html

Then I have another question. I have a huge photo gallery site with over 9000 photos under one domain, of which several country galleries are listed in DMOZ because the content is significant (some country photo galleries contain over 1000 images).

I also have several quite detailed travelogues (text, no photos), 31 to be precise, of which one is listed in DMOZ. I have never submitted the other travelogues, because if I make too many submissions people might think I'm a spammer.

There is one page with an overview and links to all 31 travelogues. If I understand the guidelines of DMOZ properly, I might submit this page to the category http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/, and for instance call it "The travelogues of Alfred Molon".

But then if somebody looks for travelogues of specific countries, i.e. China, Morocco, Malaysia etc. and looks in DMOZ, this person will not find my travelogues. Ok, then perhaps I should call the page "Travelogues of China, Morocco, Malaysia, Thailand.... etc.", and then somebody searching DMOZ might find my travelogues. But I currently have travelogues of 18 different countries and listing all countries might produce a too long title. Also, I travel a lot and every year add 5-8 new travelogues, some of them in new countries. I doubt that the travelogue entry in DMOZ would be updated frequently enough.

On the other hand, if I submitted the country travelogues to the travelogues section of the individual countries, for instance Malaysia travelogues to http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/Malaysia/ the problem would not exist and people looking for travelogues about Malaysia would easily find these travelogues. But then it would be multiple submissions and you would not appreciate that, right?

So the question is, what is the goal of DMOZ. Should it be easy for people navigating through the directory structure of DMOZ to find content? If you have a directory like http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/ with 178 entries, it's not really easy for people to find a travelogue about a specific country, or should somebody browse through 178 sites to see if there is the content they are looking for?

http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/ is a Topical area of the Directory.

I'm just going to hazard a guess because I'm on slightly unfamiliar territory, and I haven't seen your site to make any judgements about it (and I won't)but, I don't believe it would be considered spamming to submit Regionally specific unique content to the "Regional" areas you've mentioned.

My own personal view is that you are correct, web surfers interested in traveling to a specific country, would look in that area of the Directory for information about it. It would be up to the editors in those areas to make the decision about including it.

There are acceptions to every rule, which is why they're called Guidelines and not Rules, and editor discretion and common sense usually rules.

Here are some more Guidelines about travel:
http://dmoz.org/guidelines/travel/

I'm wrong, these guidelines spell it out nicely, I apologize:

Travelogues

Recreation/Travel Listing Criteria

Travelogues which span multiple continents, single continents, single countries, or standard sub-country regions (like US states, Canadian provinces, etc.) will be listed in the Recreation/Travel/Travelogues tree.

Topical Travel Category Listing Criteria

Travelogues which focus on a particular type of specialty travel (i.e. backpacking or cycling) should be listed in a topical travel category.

Regional/../Travel_and_Tourism Listing Criteria

Travelogues which focus on a particular locality should be listed in Regional. This is consistent with the Regional-topical guidelines.

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The only thing that gets listed in Regional are Travelogues about a specific locality, which is what I'm more familiar with. I'll leave my mistake and correction in there because I was wrong and it's good to be honest about it.

I'm just going to hazard a guess because I'm on slightly unfamiliar territory, and I haven't seen your site to make any judgements about it (and I won't) but, I don't believe it would be considered spamming to submit Regionally specific unique content to the "Regional" areas you've mentioned

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The individual country subcategories of Travelogues function as virtual subcategories in their respective Regional categories by way of @links, e.g. http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/Malaysia/ is @linked to from http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/Travel_and_Tourism/ . The only travelogues that would be listed directly in Regional would be ones covering areas smaller than the lowest geographic subcategory in the Recreation category, e.g. a Toronto travelogue might be listed in both Regional and Recreation because the Toronto regional category can't @link to the Recreation one.

That makes more sense. Thanks for setting me straight, motsa. I apologize alfredmolon.

In case you are interested the entry page for the travelogues is at <url removed>

At the moment only the Egypt 2001 travelogue is listed. Let me know if it would make sense to submit the travelogues to DMOZ.

I'm sorry, but, we don't do site reviews or site status checks here.

motsa said:

The individual country subcategories of Travelogues function as virtual subcategories in their respective Regional categories by way of @links, e.g. http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/Malaysia/ is @linked to from http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Malaysia/Travel_and_Tourism/ . The only travelogues that would be listed directly in Regional would be ones covering areas smaller than the lowest geographic subcategory in the Recreation category, e.g. a Toronto travelogue might be listed in both Regional and Recreation because the Toronto regional category can't @link to the Recreation one.

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Not sure if I understood you correctly. So should a travelogue about a trip to Malaysia be submitted to the http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/Malaysia/ category?

And would it be ok to submit the country travelogues individually to the country travelogues sections? That would result in 25-30 submissions (or less, given that for some countries I have several travelogues, which I might group).
I'm a bit hesitant to submit the travelogues because I already have 12 listings in DMOZ (about country photo galleries) and have been told by an editor to "...stop suggesting deeplinks of your site as this might result in a ban and in extreme cases removal of all sites you are related with..."

I'm afraid I already looked at your site before the crash, and asked questions about it in the internal fora. I didn't get a reply....

Suffice it to say that your site(s) may only be listed once in the [cat]Recreation/Travel/Travelogues[/cat] categories.

arubin said:

I'm afraid I already looked at your site before the crash, and asked questions about it in the internal fora. I didn't get a reply....

Suffice it to say that your site(s) may only be listed once in the [cat]Recreation/Travel/Travelogues[/cat] categories.

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Thanks for your time. What you write is consistent with the policy of DMOZ of requiring submitters to group related sites/pages into one submission. But I think you should review your policy.

For instance, I did a search for "malaysia travelogues":
http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=malaysia+travelogue

Got four results, none in the category Recreation/Travel/Travelogues. There are possibly Malaysia travelogues in that category, but the DMOZ search engine won't find them. And how could the search engine find them, unless the words "malaysia" and "travelogue" were explicitely mentioned in the site description in Recreation/Travel/Travelogues.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a travelogue about Malaysia, the most logical place to look for it is in Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/Malaysia. The second best place is in Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia. Actually if the travelogue is about a trip only in Malaysia and no other country, it should be listed in Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia/Malaysia. Recreation/Travel/Travelogues/Asia should be used for travelogues of trips to several Asian countries. Of course all this in my humble opinion, feel free to disagree.

Anyway, searching for a Malaysia travelogue in Recreation/Travel/Travelogues is too time consuming. There are 178 entries, and going through all of them takes too much time.

It's a category well suited for generic travel sites, but not so much for individual country travelogues. These should be listed in the country travelogues categories.

You see, if my travelogues page was placed in Recreation/Travel/Travelogues as "travelogues by Alfred Molon", it would be the 179th link in that category and would most likely be overlooked. It would not help people find travel information about a specific country.

Not sure if I understood you correctly.

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My post was a reply to crowbar's post about the difference between Topical and Regional listings, not in answer to your question about whether you could submit each of your travelogues.