Policies for listing in multiple categories

Hi guys, wanted to ask - when is a single site considered appropriate for inclusion in multiple categories?


Thanks

There is a difference between allowed sites to be suggested to more than one category and a site being listed in more than one categorie.

Suggesting
You may suggest a site to
- a topical category if the site meets the requirments of that category
- a Regional category if the site has local relevance
You may do so for all languages available on the site
You may not suggest a site to more than one topical category within the same language
You may not suggest a site to a Regional category where the company/person owing the site is not located.
You may not suggest a site to more than one Regional category within the same language, choose the most specific category that includes all locations.

Listing
Editors may decide to list a site as many times as they seem appropriate. For commercial sites this is almost never the case. For informational sites with a lot of content multiple listings are much more acceptable.

The Editor's Guidelines simply say "exceptional" sites. Exactly what that means, gets worked out in the internal forums.

Fortunately, it's not an issue for site suggestions, since the Submittal Policies are very explicit: suggest a site to The One Most-Specific Appropriate Category. During site review, an editor will consider whether other listings are appropriate.

There are a couple of socially-acceptable exceptions to the "suggest to one category only" rule.

(1) A site with content in multiple languages may be suggested to a category in each language.

(2) Sites of organizations with both global relevance and local emphasis may be listed in a topical category as well as in their local category. These would include universities (not high schools), musical ensembles, manufacturers who ship over a large area (but not local-personal-service entities like real estate agents, travel agents, plumbers, restaurants), churches (but not most religious sites), etc.

Because double-suggesting such sites actually helps editors most of the time, nobody will complain and some editors will thank you.

It's important to remember that heavily-listed sites are multiply listed because of editor consensus, not because they were aggressively suggested. Most of the aggressively-suggested sites aren't listable at all, and don't ever GET listed--or if they are listed at all, it's temporarily and accidentally.

our site relevant to more than one category

I searched the forum and was glad to find this thread.

I was wondering if it is possible for Trailer Life Directory to be listed in 2 very relevant categories. I've suggested it for:

http://www.dmoz.org/Recreation/Outdoors/Camping/Directories/

But the category below is very relevant to TLD as well. We are a campgrounds directory as well as a RV campgrounds directory.

Recreation/Outdoors/Camping/Recreational_Vehicles/Directories

I wanted to suggest it to the latter but I was afraid of getting penalized for that. If it is o.k to suggest more than once, please let me know. Also I tried emailing the editor for the 1st category but I kept getting an error page.

Sincerely,

Wicksell Metellus

If you read the posts above, you'll see that listing suggestions to more than one Topical category aren't welcome.

jimnoble said:

If you read the posts above, you'll see that listing suggestions to more than one Topical category aren't welcome.

Click to expand...

"Editors may decide to list a site as many times as they seem appropriate. For commercial sites this is almost never the case. For informational sites with a lot of content multiple listings are much more acceptable."

I just wanted to make sure after reading the post above. We have a huge informational sites with a lot of content and we have a split audience as well. I guess what you're all saying is that suggesting multiple times is not acceptable but an editor may choose to add a site to multiple categories if they feel it should be.

Thanks

The way a hierarchical directory works, sites in a category are USUALLY relevant to more than one of its subcategories. And sites in a subcategory are ALWAYS relevant to the parent category. But the "canonical" placement for a site is the most specific category that covers its content.

You can see how this works by looking at a site everyone knows: the Yahoo directory. It contains content VERY relevant to HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of our categories. And by any reasonable criterion, with its age and reputation and size, it should obviously be deeplinked before any other directory is deeplinked. In fact, it should be deeplinked before most other directories are listed at all.

If the ODP worked that way. But it doesn't -- fortunately for everyone: for the editors who don't have to do all THAT work, for the users who don't have to dig past hundreds of standard listings in every category to find the niche sites, and even for the owners of those little niche sites.

Thanks you

I understand, thank you guys for all your help and taking the time to answer my questions.