Regional Question

This just seems odd to me. I am setting up a site in Australai and would like a clue about it , please.

The site http://www.autoweb.com.au/ is listed under Regional/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Localities/B/Burwood

The site has a post office box in Burwood, but is clearly covering all of Australia.

Why is this located in such an odd part of the directory? The company may not even have an office in Burwood or anywhere near it.

When I set my site up, it would appear I should make sure I do not give any physical address at all to avoid being put somewhere completely irrelevant (from Joe Surfer's point of view). Is that a good idea?

After some investigating, I have discovered that, in the main, this holds true. IOW: If I want my new site listed in (for example) Regional/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Business_and_Economy/Automotive/ then I have to ensure I leave off any address at all.

I answered my own question! <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" alt="" /> ... but I can feel another one coming on.... <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Regional listings ar listed in the locality of the business. Listings at higher levels are either for businesses with localities in 2 or more localities (municipality) 2 or more municipalities (region) 2 or more regions (state) 2 or more states (Australia).

Informational sites (guides, directories, image galleries and similar) are listed at appropriate coverage areas.

If no location information is provided, and we cannot identify a locality for the business, the site may not be listable in Regional at all.

It may still be listable in a Topical category, provided it meets the requirements for those categories (Shopping - a way to order, prices, list of products, delivery area)

Thank you, gimmster for trying to explain the logic behind it!

http://www.autoweb.com.au/ is an informational site (as you can see). I discovered that the site is also listed in Regional/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Localities/F/Ferntree_Gully/ - which is also a suburb of Melbourne.

What amazes me is that the site is totally irrelevant to both Burwood and Ferntree Gully (i.e. a surfer looking for an Australian auto portal would *never* look in those categories).

Yet, it is clearly Australian (by virtue of the .au domain if nothing else).

The bottom line is this: I want my upcoming site to be listed in Australia under Regional/Oceania/Australia/Business_and_Economy/Automotive/

The best way to achieve this is..... what? <img src="/images/icons/confused.gif" alt="" />
If I make it clear it covers only Australia and I mention no specific physical address, it should be OK, yes?

It doesn't matter whether you mention a physical address or not. The listing is determined on where your sphere of influence is. If you are an online car sales company, selling across Australia, you'll be listed at country level, regardless of any physical address you may or may not have on the site. If you are a company located in a specific town and you expect people to come and visit you to buy things, you'll be listed at town level, unless there's no address on the site, in which case you won't be listed at all.

So: if your business is is country-wide in nature you'll get a country level listing, if it's local in nature you'll get a local listing.

To quote "
The site has a post office box in Burwood, but is clearly covering all of Australia."

I don't think adding names of contacts in another State or affiliate links to drive.com etc will convince anyone your site is National. Some people might say you are lucky to have your site listed at all, there are plenty of examples of others not so lucky elsewhere in this forum.

Hiding or not disclosing your address to get a national level listing is a furphy. (Most Aussies know what a furphy is). It's fairly obvious the editors are listing sites where they think they belong. If it is in the wrong town, I would suggest that's your fault, not theirs. <img src="/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

My site? I said I had nothing to do with autoweb.com.

Can someone (with some kind of authority) please clarify this?

autoweb.com.au at least covers all of Victoria.

I'll send an email to autoweb so they can thank to the all-knowing cleve for at least being listed <img src="/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" /> Most aussies know what "arrogance" is as well <img src="/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" /> I'm glad I didn't reveal my own site address since the comment by cleve sounds like a thinly veiled threat to remove autoweb.

Why is http://www.newcarmotorbrokers.com.au/ listed in http://dmoz.org/Regional/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Localities/C/Collingwood/ when they cover all of Australia?

They say on their site that they cover all of Australia.

My understanding of dmoz is somewhat limited, but it's a DIRECTORY, isn't it? I have also read here that the search facility is not really meant for visitors, but rather for editors.

So tell me: If I live in Adelaide and I am looking for a motor broker, how am I supposed to be able to browse to http://www.newcarmotorbrokers.com.au/ ?

The answer: It CANNOT be done unless I KNOW BEFOREHAND that they have a post office box in Collingwood, Melbourne.

Tell me again what the purpose of dmoz is? To list quality sites so that surfers CAN FIND THEM...?

I am on the wrong track, no? <img src="/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

Just one final point: One nifty thing about the Internet is that you can service (e.g mail order businesses) all of (say) Australia from one small office in Wangaratta. (Just thought I'd let cleve know.)

Take this site as an example:

http://www.commissionmonster.com.au/

Why is it located in http://dmoz.org/Regional/Oceania/Australia/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/ instead of http://dmoz.org/Regional/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Localities/D/Doncaster/

I'll paypal $5 to the person who gives the first response that makes sense and stands up to some basic scrutiny to ensure the same logic applies to it and the other 2 sites I have mentioned! Make money easy!

I'm not even going to attempt to address each of these issues, as this type of discussion is always going to lead to arguments <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> What I will say is that it's not always best to site examples from the directory. You're always going to be able to find cases that are either exceptions or are possibly misplaced. Sites do get placed in inappropriate categories.

Some areas of the Regional branch also have exceptions. For example, Regional/North_America/United_States is very different from Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom.

Also, editors are human and are not always as familiar with guidelines as we would like. When we spot these types of problems we can usually go in and fix the situation and point the editor in the right direction. So maybe quoting examples is a good thing since it lets us know where there are areas that need to be looked at <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

As to where a site should be placed in Regional. You should try to follow the Regional Guidelines. There are exceptions to these too, but for the most part this is what we are going by.

I hope that helps you to figure out where to submit your site within the Regional structure.

Thank you, donaldb! The relevant guidelines are:

Sites that should be located in the Country level:

"Sites for entities based in the country, and that have an operational area that is national and/or international in scope."

For Locality categories, it says:

"Sites for entities with a "brick and mortar" operation in the locality, and/or where the operational area has significance only to the locality and its vicinity."

Could it possibly be clearer? I will be referring editors to the guidelines if I have a problem. Even though Regional may vary in application of guidelines, they'd be hard pushed to explain how they can overlook such an obvious one <img src="/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

Thank you richard123 for pointing out that you have nothing to do with the sites mentioned. Sorry, but that was not clear to me. Discussing other people's sites here is discouraged becuase it rarely solves any problems.

Thank you donaldb for your remarks. Yes, we all work to the same guidelines and are trying to achieve the same goals. Variations between editing styles and changes to sites after they are listed will always result in differences within the directory.

The issue here was whether leaving one's address off their site will give them a higher listing in the Regional branch of the directory. I'll stick with what the other editors said and my own advice that leaving your address off commercial sites will not help anyone.

I made my comments above without looking at the sites involved because I was trying to speak in general terms about where sites are listed. Since then it's been pointed out to me that my post could be misinterpreted.

Having taken a look at autoweb.com.au/, it seems to me that the site is merely a lead generator for all the various dealers that subscribe to it. I'm not sure it has any useful content on there at all. Taking a look at newcarmotorbrokers.com.au/ I see a blank page, so no content there either.

To clarify my comment above: If a site has useful content, and it genuinely provides services to customers all over the country, then it deserves a listing at country level. This will happen whether or not there is an address on the site. If a site is only of local interest, and it has an address that allows us to determine where it is, it'll get a local listing. Removing a contact address from a site will not change a editor's view of the site's relevance, and therefore will not get a dubious site listed at country level.

The mistake richard123 seems to have made is in assuming that a site is either listed at local level, or at country level. In actuality if a site offers service over an entire country, and also offers local drop in service, it can be listed both at country and local levels. It's not a choice of either one or the other depending on whether the site has an address, it's two seperate considerations.

In actuality if a site offers service over an entire country, and also offers local drop in service, it can be listed both at country and local levels. It's not a choice of either one or the other depending on whether the site has an address, it's two seperate considerations.

Click to expand...

Actually, dfy, that's more of a UK guideline. Australia has a general policy of listing sites only once, [/i]at the level most appropriate[/i].

Taking a look at newcarmotorbrokers.com.au/ I see a blank page, so no content there either.

Click to expand...

Newcarmotorbrokers.com.au loads fine for me (it requires Flash, though) and is essentially a lead generator as well.

&gt;&gt; Australia has a general policy of listing sites only once, at the level most appropriate. &lt;&lt;

So you can see where I do most of my Regional work then. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> Now I can understand why richard123 feels the way he does.

Well, the important part of what I was trying to say is that sites only get listed at national level if they warrant it.


&gt;&gt; Newcarmotorbrokers.com.au loads fine for me &lt;&lt;

I'm using Mozilla 1.1 on linux, and all I get is a blank black page. Those are the perils of designing Flash sites.

No worries dfy, I think we all understand. It is one of the reasons we don't get off our bike when a site owner gets upset. I mean, how can we expect them to understand the complexities of editing an International Internet directory with over 3 million sites after a quick glance at the guidelines. It takes most of us at least a year to come to grips with them and the interpretations! <img src="/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" />

The other sites mentioned will be delt with by the editors who added them. They are in the best position to determine if the sites have been altered and/or are still in the correct location or not.

I think most editors will agree with your comments on flash sites. They don't always work on every type or model of browser and have caused me two reboots today already.

Nice talking to you guys. Um, that should be gals and guys. <img src="/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

http://www.autoweb.com.au/ is a mirror/clone or whatever it's called of drive.com.au. I submitted an inquiry on a new car at autoweb, and got an email that said the inquiry was generated from drive.com.au. Try it for yourself, or LMK if you want a copy of the email.

I've managed to get my site listed where I wanted it <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" /> (after some prodding and referencing the guidelines to the editor).

I have another site to submit as well, but I reckon I'll keep it out of Regional altogether. I don't want to risk being stuck in some irrelevant category <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" alt="" />

My offer of $5 has been changed (no takers on the last one) to this:

Please explain how Joe Surfer - who's looking for Australian car information - is able to browse the ODP and find autoweb.com.au which is listed in http://dmoz.org/Regional/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Localities/F/Ferntree_Gully/

Failing that: Please explain (I'm starting to sound like Pauline Hansen) how autoweb.com.au is more relevant (in terms of providing car information) to someone living in Ferntree Gully than someone living in Glen Waverly.

I understand guidelines are guidelines, but somewhere there must be some logic, right? Anyone?

PS. I assume and expect that autoweb.com.au will be removed from the ODP since it's closely affiliated with drive.com.au.