http://www.villas2000.com

Submission to: http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Florida/Travel_and_Tourism/Lodging/Vacation_Rentals/

Website http://www.villas2000.com

Would like to know status please.

Thank you. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Rejected. Multiple editors were unable to find any unique content. (Apparently they did search for it assiduously.)

If, in the future, you have other sites to submit, please read and follow the submittal guidelines.

Thank you for your reply.

What I find surprising is that if my website is deemed not to have any unique content then how can websites that do the same thing as my site, i.e. allow villa owners to advertise their vacation properties, be listed in that category. I could make you a list of many sites that all started up after my company did and in fact have the same clients advertising on their sites as they do on mine. Surely if that rule applies to my site then it should apply to them too and they be removed from the directory.

Perhaps the editor of that category could review the sites listed and state what makes them different and apparently not subject to those guidelines?

In my opinion, my website is unique in content, it is a site that specialises in vacation properties in Florida, it provides a service to tourists who like to arrange their own travel and accommodation and at my site they can find any number of suitable properties to rent and then through the site contact the owner of that property and make a booking.

As my site has properties for the whole of Florida I had selected the said category as the sub-categories were for particular areas/metros of Florida.

Thanks.

If you have specific complaints about sites that are listed contact me or anyone with the title "Meta" or "EditAll" in this forum with details.

Remember that single mistakes are no reason to make any further.

Thank you.

(Btw: I offered this to different people for about five times on different fora. I did not receive a single complaint that was a result of such a posting yet. Just for the people that are curious about this <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" /> )

I believe this one is being reviewed internally.

It is safe to say that the massive, manifold, blatant violations of the submission guidelines made review difficult for the editors, and the direct result seems to have been as predicted in the submittal guidelines (although possibly not as a deliberate editorial decision.)

More later. Maybe we can make a clear decision this time.

It would definitely help if you gave us a COMPLETE list of the names under which this site had been submitted.

I have been regularly checking the said category since I first submitted our site for review on 6 February 2002, to see if we were successful. I waited 4 months before submitting again as I had noticed several "last updated" date changes had occurred in those 4 months without our site appearing. I did not know about this forum at that time nor that a person could request a status check. I tell you, I wish I had known that then. <img src="/images/icons/blush.gif" alt="" />

I submitted again on 15 July 2002 and again 25 October 2002. My final request to that category was the last one which I did not note the date.

All those requests were under the company name of Florida Rentals by Villa Owners with the domain name www.villas2000.com (that is the domain we have used for 3 years).

If there have been any more submissions for that URL that those mentioned above then I do not know about them.

I also reviewed the specific metro categories i.e Orlando, Kissimmee, Davenport, Fort Lauderdale etc and noted that some of the large US websites (of the same type business) had multiple entries in some of these categories because their websites had specific pages for those metros. Our site also has specific entry points for areas such as Orlando, Kissimmee, Davenport, Fort Lauderdale and the other Gulf Coast metros. Therefore I have, only recently, submitted requests to the relevant categories for my entry pages along the lines of Company Name - Metro Name with url of www.villas2000.com/central/orlando.html etc The main URL has not been repeated on its own. I have done those requests only once but did not note the date. These were:
Florida Rentals by Villa Owners - Clermont Vacation Rentals to http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Florida/Localities/C/Clermont/Travel_and_Tourism/Lodging/Vacation_Rentals/
Florida Rentals by Villa Owners - Orlando Vacation Rentals to http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Florida/Metro_Areas/Orlando_Metro/Travel_and_Tourism/Lodging/Vacation_Rentals/
Florida Rentals by Villa Owners - Davenport Vacation Rentals to http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Florida/Localities/D/Davenport/Travel_and_Tourism/Lodging/Vacation_Rentals/Agencies_and_Companies/
Florida Rentals by Villa Owners - Fort Lauderdale Vacation Rentals to http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Florida/Localities/F/Fort_Lauderdale/Travel_and_Tourism/Lodging/Vacation_Rentals/
Florida Rentals by Villa Owners - Kissimmee Vacation Rentals to http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Florida/Localities/K/Kissimmee/Travel_and_Tourism/Lodging/Vacation_Rentals/Agencies_and_Companies/

I am very sorry if this was inappropriate and apologise for this. My reason simply being that if such US websites of the same business as mine can have their different sections listed then perhap I could as we have lots of interest not only for Orlando but for the Gulf Coast locations.

Sorry for the long post but I feel that our website has a lot to offer its visitors and we are a very popular company with many satisfied clients, who repeated advertise their vacation properties with us.

Being included in DMOZ along with our competitors is very important to our business and clients and we do hope that you can reconsider our application.

Thank you.

I think part of the problem is that there were too many URLs floating around. At one point the site was listed as http://www.floridavillas.freewire.co.uk: which was aggressively submitted awhile back, but finally deleted for being a redirector (to villas2000) -- in the meantime villas2000 got a rep for having the same content as a listed site (possibly floridavillas.freewire.co.uk, but there are at least two more aliases in the mix. One, which seemed to me the most plausible company name, may not have been submitted at all; and one that had, although not to the extent of the other two. This is not a complete list.)

Florida has not always been the pristine affiliate-free tropical paradise it is today (well, may someday become), so current practice isn't a good guide. The submittal guidelines are your friend. (The deeplinks and duplicate submissions irritated a lot of editors, but didn't seem to contribute to the current state so much as the URL mixup.

When I see several URLs submitted for the same site, I arbitrarily pick one (well, I try to pick the most "sensible" one, or one that doesn't redirect) and note that the others are aliases. If the company later decides to drop the wrong one, they'll have this kind of tangled mess everytime. But following the guideline about "related" URLs protects you as well as saves us trouble.

Reiterate: the original "unique content" problem may have been simply your URLs competing with each other. (That sometimes happens: I may have seen another similar situation happening today.) Now we have to start over with the site review.

Thank you hutcheson for your reply.

I did not realise that the freewire url was in the directory at any time. That was our very first starter url!!! Years ago. After a few months we then purchased our main domain name which is the one used in all our marketing www.villas2000.com.

Granted we do have frbvo.co.uk and frbvo.com (our initials as the whole name is a mouthful) but I have not submitted them for review as we only purchased them to protect our name. These are probably the aliases that you refer to. If there are any more I don't know about them!!! But our url is banded about as villas2000.com by villa owners and guests alike and so it just stuck <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" alt="" />

I have read, with interest, other threads which seem to come down to "unique content" and can understand why DMOZ do not want duplicate information in sites. With a website such as mine that allows villa owners to advertise their properties the villa owner tends to write the same description and rates about their property that they may use when advertising elsewhere (after all the owner wants as much exposure as possible and will advertise all over the place).

Hutcheson, by your last comment can I take it that my website is going to be reviewed again? And if so will I hear at this forum whether it has been accepted or not.

If not, is there any way I can have my previous submissions cancelled and start again with just the one submission?

Thank you very much.

The metas have asked for a completely fresh review. You don't need to do anything else right now.