My site got dropped?

I used to be listed in DMOZ and sometime last year my site was removed and I have no idea why. I can only assume that it may be because I moved interstate so the contact details on my site were different? I think I was in a regional category. I have since resubmitted my site with no success (I has been months now). Why would sites get removed if they have done nothing wrong? Shouldn't I just have been moved to a different region if that's the reason? Unfortunately my Google rank has suffered severley (as in no. 650!), I assume because I'm not longer listed in DMOZ. It's very hard to build up a small business when things like this happen as I effectively have no online web presence now and have to pay for ads. Yes I realise you can't answer the Google part, I just want to know why I would have been dropped and can't get back in. Site is www.animedia.com.au, I say this only so that you can check it and see that I'm not a spammer or anything remotely dodgy, just an honest hard working person trying to run a business.

No questions from this end on who you are or why you are asking -- the forum rules simply prohibit a site-specific discussion.

So, whgy would a site get "dropped" as you call it.

Let's examine some generic ideas.

1. The content changed and an editor moved it to a better category where it awaits review.
2. The content changed and the site is no longer eligible for a listing.
3. The site was down for a prolonged period of time and was delisted. It may or may not still be in some editor's private bookmarks, awaiting a future review.
4. We discovered that you are a major spammer and we delisted all 37 of your sites.
5. Something else that I cna't think of right now caused your site to go away.

OK, so what can you do? Well, it sounds like you have done everything. You have resubmitted your site. I assume that you read the FAQ and are aware tha tin some categories the wait time is greater than three years, so the absence of visible action on your suggestion does not indicate anything.

What else can you do? Not much, really, but you may find it useful to review the editing guidelines to ensure that your site is, in fact, compliant. Don't worry about silly little things like the submitted title and description -- we change almost all of those and never bounce someone because we don't like what they wrote. Similarly, don't stress of the category. We assume you made a good faith effort to pick the single best category, and it it turns out to be wrong, but still in the same neighborhood, it will get moved. If it is about airplanes, and you suggested it to a category about Russian religious Icons, the editor of the icons category may be a bit snippy -- even if your description offered: "With airplanes like these, those nifty russian Religious icons could get to market faster."

Well I can certainly rule out 3 and 4 so it must be 1 or 2. That's why I wondered about the region thing. Moving interstate and redesigning the site (but not what the site is about) both happened. So I can only hope that you're right and it got moved to another category. I can't imagine why it would no longer be eligible but I can see why it would no longer fit in the region it was in. Do editors regulary check the sites in their list and monitor things like change of locations? I guess I shall just have to cross my fingers and keep waiting, thanks. It's just so hard not knowing why you have vanished! I was in for several years. And as a web designer you just feel so helpless.

PS feel free to remove the my web address if I broke any rules mentioning it (I wasn't sure). I just figured it would be easy to assume someone was just trying it on with some crappy site full of ads (you know those things with no content whatsover that rank better than legitimate sites).

Thanks for the feedback.

Is that really why I have been dropped? That message would have been a default page on my new hosting server when I changed hosting providers (the page they stick on the servers until you upload your site). It would have been like that for less than 24 hours. I would never leave a crappy page like that up, and I certainly wouldn't create a page like that and upload it. In fact I wouldn't have even redelegated the domain without the proper site up there so I have no idea how that happened. I did have a properly designed page saying the new site was being built, but that was only for a few weeks and I had links to sites I had developed (with pictures). My new site has been up for many months now with an expanded range of services including hosting- is there any chance I could be re-included in the index?

Thank you for enlightening me, I was mystified as to why I was removed. My site wasn't out of action for long and I would never have pulled down the old site if I'd realised I'd get dropped. I will certainly never do that again. Please take pity on me and put me back in ...

http://web.archive.org/ - why not take a look for yourself ? Sure doesn't look like 24 hours to me - more like 24 months. (Note I have nothing to do with editing and reviewing your site)

I have no idea what that web archive thing is, I'll take a look tomorrow. But I can assure you that my site has certainly not been down for 24 months! I think it had a small home page for 2-3 weeks while I redeveloped and then it went back up. It has been available for about 4 years with only that short gap (where there was actually still some content). Whatever you guys are basing these things on, please visit the actual site. Something really strange is going on here..

I checked the file date of the flash movies for my site- they were created (and uploaded) 24/7/05. Which means that the current version of my site has been up, unaltered apart from minor content additions and changes, since then.

I appreciate you shedding some light on the situation, but it still really makes no sense to me why I would have been dropped. I will look into that web archive and see what's going on, but whatever it is doesn't represent the facts.

Neve.

Just had a quick look at that web archive- it couldn't be more wrong. As editors you can't rely on it. Honestly. The last version it shows (March 2005) is actually the very first version of my site, and there are quite a few redesigns that aren't on there. And the pages didn't cache properly anyway and that would not have been due to coding errors- I design web pages for a living (since 1998) and know what I'm doing. All those "under constructions" didn't exist. There was no such page on the server (I remove the default hosting pages). I use quality hosting providers that guarantee 99.9% uptime. And it has certainly been up and running this whole time and has not been archived on that site (wouldn't have a clue why).

Please don't rely on such a dodgy web service when making decisions about sites.... I certainly hope the editor wasn't using that as any sort of guide when removing my site. I can only hope he/she reads this sometime and investigates.

Neve.

Nobody delisted anything because of what they saw on archive.org. One of the reasons given in item 2 applies, or rather applied in June of 2004 when the listing was removed.

Actually, archive.org DOES figure almost never in editors' decisions -- not because we don't suppose it has the very highest reliability, but because it doesn't matter. (What we see on a site today is what we base on.)

The evidence is that something like this happened. I'm speculating that perhaps you visited your site only from your own computer, and had the website administration so badly mangled that only you saw the site -- perhaps the links went to "File://c" or something -- so you simply didn't realize for two years what other visitors (or simply robot visitors such as the ODP linkrot checker and the argive.com archiver) were seeing.

I find this rather more plausible than that a robot took umbrage at your personality and shunned your site.

hutcheson, that suggestion is so riduculous and insulting that I don't know where to start. I have been a professional web developer since 1998, I am Macromedia certified and I have many, many years of experience working full-time in the industry. I do not mangle my code and point to my hard drive! My sites work in all major browsers and I have always been able to view my web site accurately from work computers as well as my own and Google has never had a problem caching it. I also used to rank quite well in Google until I was removed from DMOZ.

My site could not possibly have been removed for this reason, and I am pleased to hear that the web archive site wouldn't have played a factor.

One thing happened at the end of June last year- I changed the web page titles to reflect that I was now located in Canberra, not Brisbane and on the 1st July I moved to Canberra. I think I might have been in a Brisbane regional business internet category (not sure) so if that was the time the site was removed, I think that would be a far more plausible reason. I had no idea when the site was removed (only checked a few months ago and noticed) so you guys providing that kind of confirmation is helpful.

If that would have been the reason (hypothetically) would the editor move my site to a new category or just delete it? It seems to me that if it was a move then it wouldn't take this long to go back in?

I really do appreciate the feedback from those familiar with how DMOZ works, but please don't assume that I was removed because my site was down or mangled because it most certainly wasn't. Not ever. I am not an amateur. There must have been another reason.

Neve.

Your site was down consistently and repeatedly. You may choose to think otherwise, that's your choice.

We do not list sites that are unreliable and unstable. That's our choice.

I know otherwise. That archive is plain wrong. And no customers or visitors ever compained. And I have rarely (as in once a year) seen my site down (I check it regularly). And yes, I clear my cache.

I also don't use the same hosting povider now that I used in March last year so there is no reason to assume it's unreliable now even if the editor had any problems then. Surely a site could be reinstated if it's obviously accurate and reliable.

Neve.

I know otherwise. That archive is plain wrong.

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To repeat what others have written here, archive.org is irrelevant to us when it comes to determining whether or not a site is accessible -- editors actually visit the site. If the site is regularly not available when multiple editors from various parts of the world visit it, then you have problems. The fact that archive.org saw (or rather didn't see) exactly what those editors saw should tell you that *something* was wrong at that time. You mentioned that you no longer use the host you were using then so perhaps there was some DNS issue or something that prevented your site from being viewed by everyone then.

I also don't use the same hosting povider now that I used in March last year so there is no reason to assume it's unreliable now even if the editor had any problems then. Surely a site could be reinstated if it's obviously accurate and reliable.

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If this had happened recently and only over a short period of time, perhaps. But it's been over a year and the site had problems for quite some time. It's essentially a new suggestion now. Resuggest it if you haven't already -- someone will eventually re-review it. You may want to add a note in square brackets at the end of the description ([...]) to indicate that the site is reliably hosted now so that it catches the attention of the reviewing editor.

There are many explanations. e.g. if you had a local HOSTS file it would override the master DNS record, and send you to a different IP address than the rest of the world sees.

To agree with other posts, no editor uses the wayback machine to decide whether a site was down in the past, they go by whether a site is available at the time they it is reviewed. I simply provided the link there as being a public source of historic information.