Our site disappeared?

I checked the stats on Alexa for Flirtbox in the UK.

I wanted to see other websites in the same category, but the link has disappeared. I have asked at Alexa and they have told me they use the DMOZ data and obviously <url removed> has disappeared from DMOZ and used to be listed? Therefore no category links can be displayed anymore.

I have searched DMOZ and noticed the only Flirtbox website listed is the German version, but the German version is the one with least visitors (less then 1000 per day) whereas the UK has over 10,000 unique visitors per day,

So why has it disappeared from there and when was that?

Thanks!

Toby

I'm sorry, but we do not discuss specific sites in this forum, with the exception of the thread for reporting broken or otherwise bad links.

There are several reasons why a previously listed site is no longer visible in the directory. Some of the most common reasons are
* The site is no longer listable, or it was never listable in the first place.
* The site is not listable in the category where it used to be listed, and has been moved for review in a better category.
* The site was unavailable and was unreviewed by an editor or by an automated process checking for dead links.

In the first of those three cases, the site shouldn't be listed; in the second case, it will be re-reviewed at some point in the new category; and in the third case, if the site returns it will be checked again and, if working, returned to the directory.

1. can not be the case. Because why is the same site in a different language with 1/10 of the traffic (not even a graph on alexa) accepted?
2. it would not make sense to remove it until it has been entered in the appropriate other category.

Apart from that, the .co.uk website was the first website 9 years ago. After that came the other websites in other languages and countries.
Personally I have not submitted all websites for consideration, some where suggested/added by other people. The main website still is the .co.uk website and the English version. The German website with the .de domain is not very busy and compared to the .co.uk website in English not as relevant.

3. this could be the case, but unlikely



P.S.: I suspect some "competitor" is an editor on DMOZ and tries to get a higher rank on the "top sites" on alexa by "kicking out" other websites

I suspect some "competitor" is an editor on DMOZ and tries to get a higher rank on the "top sites" on alexa by "kicking out" other websites

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I suspect that you are trying to blame others for what you perceive to be your misfortune.

1. can not be the case. Because why is the same site in a different language with 1/10 of the traffic (not even a graph on alexa) accepted?

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Because the amount of traffic has nothing at all to do with listability, this could very be the case.

2. it would not make sense to remove it until it has been entered in the appropriate other category.

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Because it ALWAYS makes PERFECT sense for each editor to do what is best in categories where he can edit, without waiting for anyone else to do anything, this could very well be the case.

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3. this could be the case, but unlikely

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You have knowledge of precisely three, count them, three, editing events--and one of THEM was, you think, wrong. I respectfully submit, based on a background as a math major, that you don't have adequate evidence to begin to estimate probabilities.

P.S.: I suspect some "competitor" is an editor on DMOZ and tries to get a higher rank on the "top sites" on alexa by "kicking out" other websites

Click to expand...

I do NOT have a degree in psychology, but I have seen this kind of suspicion expressed quite often--hundreds of times--and in my experience, it is usually attributable to projection.

Whether or not it's projection (this time), you lose all chances at whatever credibility--not any that you have, but that you might have hoped to earn--by making an accusation like that, in the wrong venue, without presenting evidence to back it up.

dermotz said:

3. this could be the case, but unlikely

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A site not being available can be caused by:
- the site was removed from the Internet
- the server was down for a longer period (our tools only remove a site when it has been unavailable on two evenst one week apart)
- the website is blocking our tools from spidering their website, many times caused by an inapropriate robots.txt which blocks a lot of search engines from indexingb their site

Why am i not surprised ....

The company Flirtbox is in Germany. They say so in their Websites including the UK site .
By luck , or by promotion they have more users in UK ... but that is circumstantial .

Company info

Sorry guys, this does not make ANY sense at all.

Please have a look at the DMOZ editor guidelines.

Multi-lingual Sites

If a site's content is available in more than one language, the site may be listed in more than one language category. For example, if a site is in English, German, and French, the site may be listed in an English-only category, World/Deutsch, and World/Français. When listing a multi-lingual site,

* list the URL for the "doorway" page that provides links to all the language editions; OR

* list the language-specific URL only if the doorway links to the individual language editions are not obvious.

http://www.service-public.fr/ resolves to a page written in French. On the upper right hand corner there is a link to the English version: http://www.service-public.fr/etranger/english.html
http://www.service-public.fr/ may be added to the appropriate category World/Français and to the appropriate category in the English-only part of the directory (e.g. Regional: Europe: France: Government).

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Secondly:

There are a few occasions in which a site could be listed in more than one category.

* Sites that are relevant to a subject category and a specific local geographic area. Many sites can be listed once in a topical branch of the ODP, and once in the Regional category.

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Thirdly:

Non-English Sites

Sites in languages other than English should be listed in the most precise equivalent category under World/<language>. A non-English listing in a category outside of World should be moved to the appropriate World category.

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Therefore, nobody should have changed it....

And right now it is definitely wrong.

1. in the German category, the English version is listed with a German description.
2. People looking from the UK looking for a regional dating website for the UK will not find it.
3. German people clicking on the link will close the window as it is in English not German.
4. Swedish, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Danish people will not find it unless they look in a German directory for an English website...and even if the English website was listed in the English category, they would definitely not find it - especially as French people don't like English. Germans might sometimes not mind to go on an English website, but French people don't like to speak/read English and Spanish people can't usually speak English.

I don't know what website you're talking about and don't need to know.

You seem to be saying that it's multilingual but that you've spread it over multiple domain names to achieve that.

We'd much prefer that the main URL has a language selector of some sort, in which case it would be eligible for listing in each language.

If, on the other hand, you've spread it over multiple domain names to target different countries, we'd still just list the main URL in Topical (in each language used) as above. We wouldn't knowingly list the other domains Regionally at all.

In general all search engines advise to use country-specific URLs for country-specific content. Apart from that users in Germany usually go to .de Domains and people from France to .fr domains.

I also think this is a good idea this way and I will keep it this way.

Therefore there is no "language" selector on any site, to avoid duplicate content. People can choose the other country and language-specific websites instead.

Apart from that, every website needs to be treated as an "own" website, because different people are responsible for it.

Although I initially created the network, there are different people involved, A guy from Sweden runs the Swedish website, a guy from Argentina runs the Spanish website and a UK company runs the British website for me.

Having said that, I do think it is unimportant what country I personally or anyone else lives. When I created the UK website I lived in the United Kingdom and then I moved to Germany.

I do not think it is in the sense of DMOZ to change website categories every time the owner of the website moves to another country.

Maybe next year I move to Chile, this does not mean the website will be listed in DMOZ under "Chile". Maybe one of the websites will be run by an additional company, e.g. in India or Australia. If I sold the German website to someone who lives in China, the website would not be listed in China.

If so, there is something terribly wrong with how the DMOZ rules are interpreted.

arindra said:

Why am i not surprised ....

The company Flirtbox is in Germany. They say so in their Websites including the UK site .
By luck , or by promotion they have more users in UK ... but that is circumstantial .

Click to expand...

I have lived in several countries. So you seriously want to move websites to different categories every time a webmaster moves to a different country?

Apart from that the UK version is owned by a Limited company located in Reading meanwhile. There is also a difference between who owns a website, who runs it and who is responsible for it. In the long-term every website will be run from their respective countries...this is the idea at least.

You can compare it to a "Franchise" business.

Imagine you are in France and in the yellow pages you can not find your local McDonalds listed because it is a Company located in some state in the USA and yellow pages only lists it there. Would lead to the assumption the yellow pages are not useful?

Imagine there is 2 websites, one for France and one for the USA. One is in French and is called somefrenchwebsite.fr and one is called someusawebsite.us. Both look differently but use the same software sold by another company. There would not be a problem.

Now imagine, both websites have the same design and "brandname" - they would be treated differently because you think "it is basically the same" and list it under some random country-specific directory.

I don't think you should penalize the second case...

You might not have noticed what our Submission Guidelines have to say about related websites and their listability.

You are entirely free to organise your website in any way that you wish. Similarly, we are entirely free to organise our directory as we wish.

No, you can't. Well you can, but you shouldn't.

Everything you do should be according to the DMOZ guidelines and the DMOZ spirit. You should always ask yourself "What is DMOZ for" and then decide whether a decision is a DMOZ-like decision or a personal decision that clashes with the DMOZ idea.

DMOZ is a directory of websites.

A directory serves the purpose of finding something.

DMOZ is a directory that should allow to find relevant websites in specific categories by browsing the directory.

So if at least 60 or 70 people of 100 people think a website is relevant in a certain category, an editor should not refuse to add it.

DMOZ is not your personal websites/bookmark directory, it is a directory for all all people on the internet.

If people do not manage to find a relevant website, this is because the directory is incomplete.

If people do not manage to find a relevant website, this is because the directory is incomplete.

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For most topics, surfers can certainly find a fair collection of relevant websites within ODP. We think that's a good thing.

If that fair collection doesn't include every flavour of yours, surfers are unlikely to either notice the difference or care.

The ODP rules about "related sites" are designed primarily to defend it from abuse such as yours. Even if that degrades the surfer experience in some cases (of which this is not one), it is still an acceptable, necessary and desirable feature.

Abuse ???

There is no abuse!

I have not abused the DMOZ directory - a German website needs to be listed in the German category and a Swedish one in the Swedish directory etc....

If it was a single website, I would understand it. But it is different websites in different languages for different areas.

I think this discussion has more than outlived its usefulness.

You've asked your questions and been given all the answers we can give. Continuing the discussion treads too far into "discussing specific sites" territory, which you know we don't do.

So I'm going to close down this thread. Please DO NOT continue or restart the discussion in another thread.

Thanks.