Indexing local and regional sites.

Before you answer please note - I have read "Multiple domains single business" on this site!

If a business has a range of sites covering towns and counties each with UNIQUE content is it acceptable to submit these individually to DMOZ under the relevant category in the regional structure? Each site has a url relevant to the location it serves.

We have in the past tired submitting these to DMOZ but have had different responses from editors, one instead of listing the local sites listed the uk site as a national resource (Thanks!) another threatened that repeated attempts to list local sites would result in all being delisted (At the time he edited for a region.) and a third listed their local area's site without us submitting it!

The whole point of the service provded by these sites is to allow people fast access to local information, not to crawl through links from a central site (In fact as originally built there was no central point! It just seemed useful after a while!)

At present is seems that the rules of DMOZ are not being applied consistently - which I'm sure you will agree is not ideal.

Also we are concerned that if an enthusiastic local contributor starts submitting thier local site we could end up with no sites at all in the DMOZ directory which would be a shame and ultimately penalise all the local sites.

Over to you!

Could we have a url for the main page?

I've done some work for regional, and the sites usually are produced from that area (i.e. if the site owners work in Los Angeles, then we would list it in the Los Angeles category).

I'm not sure about this situation, mabye someone that has more experience with regional could help? <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

I should add that each local site has an on the ground physical presence i.e. at least one, usually more, active local contributor.

Hi dargo21,

I will post a link to the overall site and some town sites shortly, but would like to see answers on the general questions before getting specific about these sites.

The sites are all UK based, the site owner's address appears on each site in addition to full contact details for each of the local contributors.

If you really must know a url now, private message me!

Just for background i'm not employed by any of the sites or thier contributors, I have been helping out pro bono with marketing as I know the owner of the sites and would like to know if I did the wrong thing by starting to submit the local sites to DMOZ in regional/town categories.

Regards

Memetic

What we are supposed to do is list the main site in an appropriate category. The local sites are simply sub-sites of the main one and we would better serve our users by listing the main site at a high level. For example, if you had a site that contained a UK jobs guide, then you created a London jobs guide site, and a Birmingham jobs guide site, we would not list the local versions as they are simply satellites of the main site.

It does sometimes happen that editors in a regional category will list a regional sub-site, but that's because they simply haven't recognised that it is a sub-site. It will be spotted at some point and then removed.

Ok if thats the rules then so be it but I question that users are better served as per:

"we would better serve our users by listing the main site at a high level"

Taking your example a user in Birmingham, searching for a Birmingham area job might find no local job sites under the Birmingham regional category (I'm sure that there are lots of jobs sites in that category in real life but this is hypothetical!)

Surely directly linking the local information under a specific geographic category makes sense as it lets a user get to information faster, especailly if that link is to a domain that they can bookmark which takes them directly back to that information. (I can see some sense in not indexing for example www.site.com/country/region/county/town.html as that would duplicate the DMOZ structure.)

Applying the logic you suggest AOL for example is wrongly indexed on DMOZ as a search for AOL shows up links to:

http://access.web.aol.com/
http://www.aol.com/webcenters/international/home.adp
http://www.aol.com/webcenters/health/home.adp
http://mediaspace.aol.com
http://www.aol.com/webcenters/homegarden/home.adp
http://members.aol.com/CptWild/fsg/index.htm
http://search.aol.co.uk/
http://hometown.aol.com//healthorg/resume1/index.htm
http://www.aol.com
http://quicken.aol.com/?pid=785569880464212
http://www.aol.com/webcenters/research/home.adp

And these can all be accessed from www.aol.com (Which appears on the 2nd page of results.)!

Perhaps the secret is to have sub domains not separate domains? <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" /> or just be a major infrastructure proivider!

Any site can be deep-linked if it provides significant content that enhances a category. The AOL examples you give above all come from various different facets of AOL and they all have distinct and useful content (well, it could be questioned in the Hometown and Members areas, but you get my point).

If our hypothetical jobs guide site had a London sub-site that contained copious information about London weighting, transport infrastruture in relation to commuting, major employers, where to find listings of jobs, etc. then it would be worth listing as a deep-link. If it simply presents the jobs from UK Jobs Guide that happen to be in London, it's not providing any region specific information. I'm sure the main UK Jobs Guide site will have a search function, so the regional sub-site is unnecessary.

Hi memetic. I'm editing in a small regional branch where web sites are a bit thin on the ground. A bare cat such as a small locality B&amp;E cat might well list even a deep link with one or two pages about a local company from a regional conglomorate web site. Or even a small state B&amp;E cat might list a deep link with one or two pages of unique contents about the economy of the state.

However, as the web sites for these localities/states cats grow, there'll be less likelihood of a deeplink or subdomain of big regional/national site, being able to trump the "unique contents" of a locally produced site.

http://dmoz.org/guidelines/include.html#include (2nd para, emphasis mine) says ...
Consider the relative value of a resource in comparison to others information resources available on your particular topic. Relative value refers not only to the quality of the site, but also to its ability to contribute important, unique information on a topic.

I believe the above applies to both independent sites and deeplinked/subdomain sites.

http://quicken.aol.com/?pid=785569880464212 should never have been listed and in fact was deleted last month. It just redirects users to quicken.com.

At present is seems that the rules of DMOZ are not being applied consistently

Click to expand...

Memetic,
Editors make decisions related to where a site is best placed or whether it should be placed at all, after viewing the site in question. To ask us these questions without revealing the url serves no purpose.

If you will share the site urls and the category to which you added them, we will be able to answer your questions more definitively.

Thanks for understanding. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />