http://www.e-gnu.com

My site is listed in the following category:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Africa/Travel_and_Tourism/Travel_Services/Tour_Operators/Adventure_Travel/, where there is no editor. Because of changes to our site as well as a change in our company's marketing areas, it is necessary to update the title and description of the site to better reflect this changed emphasis. I submitted these changes 09/13/2002, and am wondering what the status is of my submission, esp. since there is no editor in the category. Thanks. M.

Your site has been listed about twenty minutes ago. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> See Regional/Africa/Travel and Tourism/Travel Services/Tour Operators/Adventure Travel.

Thanks for quick response - really appreciated. I checked out my listing, but there have been no changes to title &amp; description (did refresh). Do your changes still need to be uploaded? My changes and reason when I resubmitted were as follows:
Title:
African Safari Travel | E-Gnu.com: Planning Africa Safaris.

Description:
African Safari - Specialist Tour Operator for luxury wildlife safaris in Africa, honeymoon &amp; romantic safari travel, online vacation planner, maps, images, advice...

Reason:
Our web presence has expanded to cover East Africa, so it is very important that our title and description reflect changes to both our site's content and our company's field of operation. Thanks.

The regeneration of the public pages is currently running very slowly due (I Think <img src="/images/icons/confused.gif" alt="" /> ) to server load. Pages are taking over 8 hours and up to a day <img src="/images/icons/frown.gif" alt="" /> to regenerate (reflect updated information). Check again tomorrow, but it should be OK. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Thanks - I can be patient! This forum is outstanding and I am most impressed with the quick responses of both editors. Much appreciated. M. <img src="/images/icons/cool.gif" alt="" />

FYI: Keep in mind that update requests may not be accepted in their entirety or even at all if said update doesn't meet the ODP guidelines. Just going by what you indicated you submitted in your earlier post, neither the title update nor the description update match ODP guidelines.

To the team: Thanks for updating my listing. However, I must request that the listing be reviewed, as the editor has not made reference to the word "African" or "Africa" which is a vital definition of our area of operation, as we do not offer safaris or tours in Australia, Bangaladesh or any other country which sells safaris. Our area of operation is Africa, and I would request that the description be reviewed. The previous DMOZ Title and description was far more pertinent to our area of operation and more accurately reflected our website's content. What process do I follow from here to get the listing new reviewed? Thanks. M.

'Africa' was not included in the description because the category path already contains 'Africa' is so it is therefore unnecessary.

Imagine what the category would look like if every site description in it mentioned 'Africa'. It would get very repetitive.

We are a directory, not a search engine. We do not optimise for keywords, sorry.

The word Africa is in the category name http://dmoz.org/Regional/Africa/Travel_and_Tourism/Travel_Services/Tour_Operators/Adventure_Travel and our guidelines recommend that the description not repeat the title or category name.

Obviously someone using the directory will already know they are looking in Africa. As for keywords for search engines - It's none of our business. (Remember search engines use information from the site - the ODP is just a supplier of URL's as far as they are concerned)

You can try to request an update to the description again using the update URL form, but I wouln't hold out much hope.

Thanks for reply. I take your point, but many web surfers also use dmoz as a search engine (the ones with brains do, anyway), but they normally would not delve through categories, but rather make use of your own "Search" function. The way DMOZ displays results clearly shows that keywords (eg. african safari) contained in the the title and description of a site play a crucial role in how dmoz displays results.
My search for "african safari" brought up my website at #129, but the old title and description is still displayed, as follows:
E-Gnu.com - Your Home for African Safari Travel Planning - Southern Africa Tour Operators - Luxury, Wildlife Safari Travel, Nature Expeditions, Conservation &amp; Eco specialist tours &amp; travel, family, individual, independent &amp; small private groups.

With my new listing description devoid of the words "african" or "safari", I would not even have a placing in your own search results. BTW, when does dmoz update their own search results, because my listing within the category has changed, but a search result still displays the old listing? Thanks, M.

Mike,

It usually takes some time for the DMOZ search index to be synched with all the updates that are done in the directory. Give it some time and then try doing a search again. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

The search is supposed to update about once per week, but occasionally is longer.

The search should be used to find categories not sites. You will see that the first part of the returned results lists categories. The user can then choose the best category, and can enter that category to see all the sites within, whilst not having any other category results mixed in.

The search page can be used for, well, whatever it does (which, as is occasionally pointed out, isn't everything the world might want in a search). But it IS in my experience true that you can get fairly usable results for many purposes only through effective use of the "category" information. Directory categories are, after all, what we do -- and a lot of work has been put into making those categories useful (and to designing listings that are most useful in the context of the category.)

So, if the search doesn't do what you want, stand stand in line with the rest of us. If it occasionally does, enjoy it: but remember that the chances of any real customer using it are very low. For promotion efforts, concentrating on Google and Inktomi will pay off much better.