Distinguishing a travel portal from an affiliate site

Firstly, my appologies if this is in the wrong forum. I am not enquiring about a site's submission status as such; more a question of ODP policy.

I have a client who is a large travel aggregator, whose business model is based upon advertising airline tickets - not selling them.

Their website is http://www.cheapflights.com/

As an airline tickets portal, it is the site's/business purpose to help people find good deals on airline tickets by allowing advertisers to post their offers for a fixed fee.

I understand that the ODP has strong views on the sites that it choses to list, selecting quality, original websites and rejecting affiliates with little unique content.

I fear that Cheapflights are being subjected to treatment akin to such affiliate sites by editors through fear of letting in a site that goes against ODP guidelines.

I have read through the guidelines here - http://dmoz.org/add.html - and believe the crunch point may be "Don't submit sites consisting largely of affiliate links."

Whilst Cheapflights.com offers listings of flights available on the web and through travel agents, it does not contain affiliate links. They do track the click-throughs, and they do deliver traffic to other websites, but do not act as an affiliate.

Personally, I use the site myself to find flights and think it is a great travel resource up there with the likes of Expedia and Travelocity and (though I may be biased by my professional position) certainly feel it to be worthy to be in the directory, and believe it fits all necessary critera.

I would greatly appreciate some feedback regarding this site from the editors.

Thanks in advance for your insight.

So if I understand this correctly, the product you are marketing is marketing someone else's product? You don't actually do anything but route clicks through to the actual provider of the product, maybe after giving the surfer some basic information?

Forget the affiliate thing - what we need to understand is how this would qualify as "quality unique content" which an ODP editor would consider useful enough to list - and I'm not really seeing that right now.

Please educate us.

(NOTE: I am basing these comments purely on the comments you have made, and have deliberately not looked at the site in order to give you general rules, rather than a specific site review)

You have significantly misrepresented our feelings, and (since, as you say, they are strong) we need to clarify them.

We have nothing whatsoever against affiliate links!

We have something (very strong feelings) about any site whose purpose is primarily to drive traffic to another site! We don't care whether or how they track the links! We don't care whether or how they get paid! We don't care whether or how the entities are commercially associated!

It is the "doorwayness" of a page that makes it ineligible for listing, not the tags on the links. And it is the number of doorway pages that makes our feelings so strong.

adamc said:

they do deliver traffic to other websites

Click to expand...

That's what WE try to do. You're in competition with ODP. We want to be the doorway to the content that matters. Doorways themselves don't matter to us, and we try to avoid listing them.

Originally Posted by adamc

they do deliver traffic to other websites

Click to expand...

Originally Posted by cleaner

That's what WE try to do. You're in competition with ODP. We want to be the doorway to the content that matters. Doorways themselves don't matter to us, and we try to avoid listing them.

Click to expand...

Originally Posted by hutcheson

We have something (very strong feelings) about any site whose purpose is primarily to drive traffic to another site! We don't care whether or how they track the links! We don't care whether or how they get paid! We don't care whether or how the entities are commercially associated!

Click to expand...

But you do list directories. This site, in effect is also a directory.


Originally Posted by hutcheson

It is the "doorwayness" of a page that makes it ineligible for listing, not the tags on the links. And it is the number of doorway pages that makes our feelings so strong.

Click to expand...

Could you explain more about this and why it is a problem?

We do not list all directories. The doorwayness is related to a Travel Portal. We do not like to list Portals, rather we like to bypass portals and go to the source.

Basically, whenever we see a site desribed as a "portal", we expect it to be what we call "doorway spam."

Our editorial policy, as enunciated by our editor-in-chief speaking ex cathedra, is "A site whose primary purpose is to drive commercial traffic to other sites MAY NOT BE LISTED".

We just list the other sites. Then, by definition, that site has no unique content and isn't eligible for listing anyway.