Problems in updating an obsolete URL

My website is listed in a non-English category. It is a noncommercial site which I have maintained for ten years.

Earlier this year, I moved my site to a dedicated domain and set up a "site moved" page at the old URL. Shortly thereafter, I submitted an URL update request for the ODP listing of my site. I went through the usual procedure to update a listing, giving a valid email address and so on. Nevertheless, my listing still has the obsolete URL. It's been five months now.

Looking at the date at the bottom of the ODP category page indicates that the category in question is being constantly updated. However, all changes in the category this year appear to be removals of URLs that return a 404. This leads me to believe that the category is being automatically maintained so that dead links are purged, while manual update requests are being ignored.

The redirection page at the old URL of my site is a normal HTML page with a simple link to the new address of my site. In other words, the old URL is being served with a 200 OK instead of a 301, 302 or 404 - due to reasons beyond my control. That's probably why the obsolete URL hasn't been picked up by the automatic update mechanism (assuming there is one).

I do not wish to resubmit the update request because I do not want to engage in "spamming". Neither do I want to wait another five or six months to find out if the listing is going to be updated or not. What is the appropriate procedure to follow? I have read through all relevant instructions, FAQs, help pages and guidelines that I have gotten my hands on, and I haven't found a clear answer.

At this point, I am reluctant to post this question to the sub-forum for the language my site is in. Please just let me know what the procedure for updating obsolete URLs is when the official "update listing" route fails to work.

If you put the "site moved" up on the old URL and requested a URL update then that is the best course of action you could take. The most probable reason that an update request of this nature hasn't been corrected is that no one has had an opportunity to look at the request yet. Not knowing the category (and it being non-english), it is possible there are only a few editors that understand the language well enough and with proper permissions available to handle the request and they haven't had a chance to review it.

I suppose you could report it in the quality control thread here, but it doesn't mean that an editor here will be in any better postition to look at it than those reviewing the update reqeusts.

Hope that helps.