http://www.shop-links.net

Submitted URL: http://www.shop-links.net

Dmoz URL to Category
http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/California/Counties/Fresno/Business_and_Economy/

Trail on Dmoz to Category
Top: Regional: North America: United States: California: Counties: Fresno: Business and Economy

We submited our business there months ago and did not got any response. We realized, that it might be related a missing editor FOR THE WHOLE COUNTY.

We then re-submitted out Site to
http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/California/Business_and_Economy/

or

Top: Regional: North America: United States: California: Business and Economy

and contacted the 2 editors to let them know about the problem of missing editors at lower categories.
Nothing happened so far. No response whatsoever.

ANY response, feedback, reason for disaproval etc. would be appreciated. All Emails, Comments and Feedbacks to anybody at Dmoz.org were sucked up by a gigantic black hole so far.

Your site has been submitted to various categories of our directory. However none of these submissions has been accepted yet. A submission to Regional: North America: United States: California: Counties: Fresno: Business and Economy was deleted in October, another one to Regional: North America: United States: California: Business and Economy in November. I don't know for sure why this was done; but to me it is not obvious in what your site focuses on California or Fresno county specifically.

Have you read our Site Selection Criteria yet? Please make sure your site meets the requirements given there before resubmitting.

Yours,
Robert

We added the Site to those categories, because we are a california based business. We are located in Fresno/California.

However. I added our Site today to:
http://dmoz.org/Home/Consumer_Information/Price_Comparisons/
Top: Home: Consumer Information: Price Comparisons

That category seems to be the best to describe our site.
I read the "Site Selection Criteria" and are certain, that we meet them. I haven't found a Site yet, which is doing what we do.

If you are based there, I suggest you make this more clear on the site. I was unable to find any references to your actual location.

Carsten_C. When you read the Site Selection Criteria, did you see the section about "Affiliate Sites"?

It is most likely the reason your site is not listed.

In the about us section:

http://www.shop-links.net/whoweare.asp

Personally, I'd look for a contact address on the Contact Page - but that's probably just me....

Oh, it's worth reading our guidelines on affiliate sites, specifically the section that reads >> Sites consisting primarily of affiliate links, or whose sole purpose is to drive user traffic to another site for the purpose of commission sales, provide no unique content and are not appropriate for inclusion in the directory <<.

Your site appears to be mainly (if not all) affiliate links.

Off-topic: Nice selective editing on the "What is Shop-Links.net?" page - no mention of the free submission system to Altavista or any mention to Google <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

I read the part about Affiliate Sites very closely.

The Guideline refers to Sites which are just a List of Affiliate Links to Online Merchants and therefore just mirrowed content and are not unique. I understand, that you do not want to have such sites in your listings even though you have thousands of them in your listings.

If you take a closer look at our site, you will see, that this does not apply fot us.

We are not affiliated with more than 40% of the merchants listed on our site and that number is increasing every month.

Every small online Merchant can be listed on our site.
http://www.shop-links.net/registerwebsite.asp

The ranking in our Listing is exclusivly by unique Site Rating. The better the Rating, the better the Ranking, no matter if we are affiliated or not.
Every User can rate and re-rate any site, whenever he wants.

We have no submission or listing fees (paid inclusion) and we do not plan to something like that. We are not a Looksmart, who charges first for the submission and switches later the submitted URL to Affiliate URL.

We also have some more features. You can read about it here.
http://www.shop-links.net/ourmission.asp

I hope you reconsider our site to be listed at ODP.

Thank you.

beebware: please read my next post

Editall
"Off-topic: Nice selective editing on the "What is Shop-Links.net?" page - no mention of the free submission system to Altavista or any mention to Google"

Google is a Classic Search Engine. We refered to them in general.

To Altavista. Altavista spidered only our homepage for months and months. Altavista started to spider our whole site AFTER we paid money (paid-inclusion).

Sites should not be denied listings simply on the basis of whether or not they use affiliate links. The determination is based, rather, on unique content. In this case I fail to notice any unique content on this site, and so I agree with its rejection.

apeuro
"Sites should not be denied listings simply on the basis of whether or not they use affiliate links. The determination is based, rather, on unique content. In this case I fail to notice any unique content on this site, and so I agree with its rejection."

I agree with your first sentence, but dis-agree with the rest. Tell me A SINGLE SITE IN THE DMOZ DIRECTORY, that does the same we do. You can't? Surprise. What is an unique Website? A Site with an unique Idea? a different idealogy?
Be open minded and look closely and you will find it.

Tell me A SINGLE SITE IN THE DMOZ DIRECTORY, that does the same we do. You can't? Surprise. What is an unique Website? A Site with an unique Idea? a different idealogy?

Click to expand...

Maybe not so surprised about this. What is surprising is that people, upon seeing that there are no sites similar to theirs published, take this to mean their site is unique while failing to consider the more likely possibility that similar sites have been rejected for the same reasons as theirs.