My website was rejected....why?

Hi DMOZ,

I waited 4 months after submitting my site for a response from DMOZ, to no avail, so in desperation I posted a request to Site Submission Status only to be informed my site was rejected - no reason given.

How can I find out what the reason for rejection was? I've been in this business for a long time and as far as I'm concerned my website http://www.impotence-guide.com, follows ALL the criteria set out by DMOZ.

I want to resubmit, but I'd like to know what (if anything) I have to change
before doing so.

Can someone please help me??

Chris M
Webmaster
http://www.impotence-guide.com

Basically, all rejections fall into one of three categories.

(1 -- extremely rare) Massive spam. And when I say "massive" I mean the worst offenders make hundreds of submittals a day.

(2) Primary purpose of website is apparently to drive commercial traffic somewhere else.

(3) Inadequate unique relevant content.

You know where you got your content; and you know what the purpose of your site is: in fact, you know more about that than we do. So there's not really anything we can tell you, except to enlarge on the concept of "unique".

For health sites, "unique" includes, among other things, actual information, authoritativeness, and perspective. It most certainly does NOT include such things as website design, content rewording, or commercial promotions. (The latter seem to be the things that spring to the mind -- well, cranial cavity -- of marketroids when the word "unique" is used).

The more sites we already have on a given topic, the harder it is to find something new and different to contribute. The first site or two on "Markhovsky's Disease" gets listed almost automatically. After the twentieth, the burden of uniqueness is very heavy.

That's the perspective we have, and the context in which your site was reviewed. With that, you should be able to identify the specific reason -- although so far as the ODP is concerned, it probably won't help you any, except to understand why we aren't interested. It's not that you failed to leap one of our artificial hurdles, it's that you're not running the same race.

Since I am one of the luckey ones not to be a admin or meta or whatever...I would give you some advice...Since I personaly think they shoudl have a critic area or something here but anyways...Your site is a little too "Mature" for me...so your out of luck.

I am the master Critic LOL.

Additonally, since I am don't feel like doing my homework and would rather be typing this right now, I highly disagree that telling people what they could do to make there site better, or what they could create is a bad idea. Maybe telling that one person what they could do, and not just that your site isen't unique or whatever, woudl be a good idea....maybe you will have less spam, and more quality sites. Of course it is a lot of work (I have like 60 original reviews on my site...and I am not even close to my goal of 200 by the end of jully) but, if they recive a message saying that they could get on the directory if they were to do so and so (Maybe...no garentee)...you may get a lot more quality sites...

Just a thought...I'm so luckey i'm not an editor Then again I am like admin of a whole company...power is nice thou...ummm...of topic...sorry.

[quote name='chatterbug89']Your site is a little too "Mature" for me...so your out of luck.[/quote]

Just to clarify - sites are not rejected for having "mature" content. The ODP lists Hegelian philosophy, geriatric care and p0rn.

[quote name='chatterbug89]I highly disagree that telling people what they could do to make there site better, or what they could create is a bad idea. Maybe telling that one person what they [I]could[/I] do, and not just that your site isen't unique or whatever, woudl be a good idea....maybe you will have less spam, and more quality sites. [. . .'] if they recive a message saying that they could get on the directory if they were to do so and so (Maybe...no garentee)...you may get a lot more quality sites..[/quote]

A few points.

* To tell people what they could do to make their sites better is not the same as telling them what to do to get into the ODP. We keep pointing people to our guidelines; if their sites are among those that should be listed according to the DMOZ guidelines, why, then they will be. We lead webmasters to the water, but we have better things to do with our time than forcing them to drink.

* There are many other discussion forums on the web giving webmasters tips and information on how to improve their sites. Many of them are geared towards commercial webmasters/SEO people, true, but there's plenty of sites that help ordinary webmasters as well.

* Telling people in each case of rejection exactly how to change their site to conform to the guidelines seems like an abysmally bad idea to me. We are not interested in sites that just barely pass the "sufficient unique content" line. And finding good sites is rarely a problem for us anyway; remember that processing submissions is only one of the things we do as editors, and not the most important one either.

Unique?

hutcheson said:

(3) Inadequate unique relevant content.

Click to expand...

In a list of for example, shoe shops, how does one have unique content?

It's the same as every other business on the planet. If what it DOES is unique, then its own authoritative description of that is, by definition, unique content. And I've never yet met a businessman who didn't know what he did that was unique.

The contrapositive works also: anyone who has to ask this question not only doesn't have a business, but doesn't know what one is. And so the question doesn't arise: it's not a problem, because you're never going to be in a position where the answer matters.

In a list of for example, shoe shops, how does one have unique content?

Click to expand...

What makes a shoe shop unique? Isn't really the right question. All shoe shops are inherently unique since they are in different physical locations (albeit there could be two next door to each other).

The correct question is: What makes a shoe shop website sufficiently unique for it to be useful to our users?

Well it should not be a deeplink reachable from a shoe shop chain company already listed in the directory. Since that doesn't add anything our users couldn't find already from the branch locator section of the chain website.

And it should have more content than can be obtained from the yellow pages. This could be online ordering/shopping. It could be a list of the current product lines with photographs and prices. It could be a profile of the company introducing the staff, offering job vacancies and documenting the history of the business.

NB: These things would generally be sufficient for a listing in regional (subject to them being substantial enough - 2 lines of history and an address would not generally be sufficient.)
Shopping has a different set of criteria for listing - which you can read more about here (http://dmoz.org/Shopping/faq.html) if you are interested.

Ok...you have your point...Having a extra forum called Site Crituiqeing or something woulden't be a bad idea...and you editors woulden't even have to go near it if you diden't want to...but oh well...I lose...lol...on my super secret (better than Dmoz someday) project... you'll have to wait and see...