How to follow up when category lost?

Some while ago now--months, I believe--I submitted a couple of sites, one personal and one community pro bono.

Since that time, owing to a disk crash, from which I have not fully recovered (and probably never will), I do not know the exact category to which each site was submitted. It is, at least to me, never fully obvious where a given site best belongs, so I cannot retrace my steps by sheer logic.

Is there any sort of central registry of submitted sites, such that I could apply with the site names to find out to which exact category I had submitted each?

Thank you.

No there is not. We would have to manually search more than 590,000 submission folders and i doubt that any volunteer wold volunteer to do that.

All is not lost, however. If an editor has moved, edited, deleted or logged comments on a site, we can identify it by URL and piece together a pretty good picture of where it is.

And, if we cannot find it that way, and if you have only submitted each one once in the past, they we would recommend that you resubmit. Two submissions does not a spammer make.

So give us the URLs and we'll see if you are lucky.

Thank you. That would be most helpful.

The pro bono site URL is:
--and the site name is The History Museums of Ritzville, Washington State. It was, I am quite sure, submitted to some regional category under "Washington State".

The personal site URL is--
--and the site name is SEO Tools, Toys, and Packages. I am less sure where that was sent.

(And I had thought, in bland innocence, that my drives were backed up. They sort of were, except the backer-up saw an empty drive and made the mirror match it--empty. Sigh.)

Any possible help will be deeply appreciated.

The museum site is listed in http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Washington/Localities/R/Ritzville and http://dmoz.org/Reference/Museums/History/North_America/United_States . The latter listing may move when a Washington state subcategory is created.

What I did NOT see on those pages, and ought to have seen, is a link to the web developer site (I'm assuming it was you or your people; this may be wrong.)

I feel very strongly that the PBS model of "promotion" is especially suited for small web services companies. You guys ought to hunt down every neat little park, museum, volunteer organization, etc., you know of, and build sites for them in your spare time. Add the link to your own site as "web developer". Don't make a big deal of it; but it is valuable information for visitors ("hey, this is a neat little site: nothing too fancy, but it puts the town on the map") as well as valuable links for you. Pay the $6.95 annually for a domain name for them....that's forty-odd potential ODP listings for the price of one Yahoo! site review. And while other people are waiting on the enormous backlog of submittals for small web development shops, you're racking up the page rank off of the little local informational sites that ODP editors so love to list -- quickly.

The other site hasn't been touched: I can't tell whether it has even been received. (You can submit it again, wait a month and bump this thread to ask us again, this time remembering the category. Two submittals won't put you in the class of "evil spammers" (particularly if you do another pro bono promotion like that last one!). I would also add that if you are really providing significant pro significant services, that it would be appropriate to mention that also on the page: ("web design by XXX; website placement by YYY." ODP submittal isn't VERY significant, but constructive advice to the web designer about search-engine-friendly pages, log analyses, search information, etc. might count.

And if you do face-to-face meetings with your clients, then by all means submit also to the Business subcategory of your Locality.

The museum site is listed in http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_Amer...ies/R/Ritzville and http://dmoz.org/Reference/Museums/H...a/United_States . The latter listing may move when a Washington state subcategory is created.

Click to expand...

Thank you: that is good news. I had assumed it lost because a search at the top dmoz level for the URL did not (and still does not) find it. But, by gum, there it is, next to the Ritzville Public Development Authority site (which I also did).

What I did NOT see on those pages, and ought to have seen, is a link to the web developer site (I'm assuming it was you or your people; this may be wrong.)

Click to expand...

Yes, it was I; but there is a link tucked away at the bottom of some subsidiary dynamic pages I was and am leery of anything suggesting to those nice people--and they really are--that I had selfish motives.

I feel very strongly that the PBS model of "promotion" is especially suited for small web services companies. You guys ought to hunt down every neat little park, museum, volunteer organization, etc., you know of, and build sites for them in your spare time. Add the link to your own site as "web developer". Don't make a big deal of it; but it is valuable information for visitors ("hey, this is a neat little site: nothing too fancy, but it puts the town on the map") as well as valuable links for you. Pay the $6.95 annually for a domain name for them....that's forty-odd potential ODP listings for the price of one Yahoo! site review. And while other people are waiting on the enormous backlog of submittals for small web development shops, you're racking up the page rank off of the little local informational sites that ODP editors so love to list -- quickly.

Click to expand...

I wasn't thinking in those terms, but that is 110% correct. It's a win-win situation: good for the orgs, and some PR for the developer. Plus then there's an incentive to build up the site's PR and SERP, which benefits them nicely.

The other site hasn't been touched: I can't tell whether it has even been received. (You can submit it again, wait a month and bump this thread to ask us again, this time remembering the category.

Click to expand...

I will do that (and include a link to this thread!)

Thank you again.

I might, en passant, suggest some thought be given to having submissions go through a central point for recording before they are distributed to the corresponding editor. There are many reasons that might be helpful to you, as well as to submitters. Were submissions by email, I (and those perhaps in my situation) would always have a record, automatically, ourselves.