Finding the Right Regional Cat

I need to submit a site for a company that's based in Massachusetts, but provides services throughout Mass and Rhode Island. At first, I considered submitting to New England > Business and Economy > Services but since they don't serve the other four states in the region, that clearly doesn't make sense.

Do I need to choose one state, or can I submit the site to both Massachusetts > Business and Economy > Services and Rhode Island > Business and Economy (which doesn't even seem to have a services subcat) without an editor treating me like I'm spamming the directory?

The company, by the way, performs animal removal services (bats, squirrels, raccoons, etc). "Services" seems to be the most accurate subcategory.

In Regional we list sites in the city they are located in.
If the company has more than one office the site will be listed on the next higher level that will fit all localities of these offices.

See also http://dmoz.org/guidelines/regional/listing.html

I'm afraid that's problematic too. From the State, Province or Equivalent section of the page:

Sites for entities whose operational area is generally limited to the entire state. Includes sites for entities that have several offices throughout the state, but may serve local areas.

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They have only one office, but they have different contact information for different localities, and they certainly serve the entirety of the two states (the only exception being that they recommend another company for one specific task in one part of their service area). Their physical office location seems irrelevant to me, since all of their business is at client sites. No one comes into the office to hire them. Their customers, without exception, either telephone or email.

From the Locality section:

Sites for entities with a "brick and mortar" operation in the locality, and/or where the operational area has significance only to the locality and its vicinity.

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I don't think their brick and mortar location has anything to do with the nature of their business, except that calls from that location are likely to have them on-site more quickly, and their operational area is far larger than the town where they answer the telephone.

The brick-and-mortar location NEVER has anything with the nature of ANY business. They are completely orthogonal concepts.

The ODP, like any schematization of reality, does a certain amount of corner-shaving to minimize the number of shapes of holes we have to teach people to shove pegs into. The way we handle this one (in REGIONAL categories) is: list the website in the locality where the business is. And include in the description a very concise (non-keyword-stuffed) description of the service area: something like "Offers emergency plumbing services in Southern North Dakota and Northern South Dakota."

I see your point, but I'd be much more likely to agree with you if their location were a store or any place where their customers could show up. In this case, you don't do business with them by showing up where they are. You call and they come to you.

But I suppose that doesn't matter. Policy is policy, and I'll submit to the town they're in.

Thanks.

Yeah, but if you think about it, that model applies to a lot of businesses. Nobody ever walks into Joe the Plumber's garage where he keeps his spare supplies -- they call and he drives his truck to their house or business. And then there are hybrid businesses, like photographers or real estate agents, where the travel may go both ways.

But in a directory, it's one size fits all, even if we have to use the really big hammer to make it fit.

Fair enough. I've sent the site owner a link to this thread so he can see why I wasn't able to get him what he wanted

To add to your confusion -- there are some types of businesses where we make the decision to list by service area, rather than the physical location of the business -- and if your business is of that type, we might list it in the two states rather than in New England, but you should still submit it to New England.

However, you can't go wrong by submitting it to the Locality.

Although disagreeing with hutcheson may be hazardous to my health....

Well, I'd certainly never openly disagree with Hutcheson. I have a rule against attempting to debate people who use words like "orthogonal" as commonly as I use "like".

The business in question removes wild animals from houses and businesses -- bats, raccoons, skunks, squirrels (grey and flying), birds, foxes, etc, then makes repairs on the buildings to make sure they don't get back in and cleans up the mess they left.

So hopefully whoever's editing the local page to which the site owner submits sees that they ought to be listed regionally for both Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Perhaps