Hi Alucard,
It seems that I have become a bit confused and surprised by your reply. :icon_ques
Re: #1385... I have done some of the more obvious pruning of duplicates. The issue is that because the business is a Web Hosting business, they host "sub-sites' which, because they are clearly not the same business, are listable.
The question remains open as to whether the various "guide" sites are all listable, but I will need to leave that for an editor with a little more time than I have right now.
But thanks for the heads-up!
I never thought the main point of abuse I was speaking for, was the "sub-sites" of this company! As you said, they are a Web Hosting business that are listed on Advertising and Marketing category as well - !!! - so can anyone believe that they didn't know what they were doing???
Didn't they know that having 2 listings of the same domain on the same category is called simply "abuse"???
Didn't they know that posting only keywords for their description is called simply "abuse"???
Diidnt' they know that having 3 domains with almost the same content on the same topic is simply called "abuse"???
The following text is copied from their home page at
http://www.united-online.net:
From this website you may find out about our services and how you can benefit from marketing your products through
www.united-hellas.com,
www.greek-hotels.com and
www.all-hotels-in-greece.com.
These vortals (market specific web sites) are unique in their respective fields in that they offer ultra high visibility and placement in all major international search engines and indexing portals.
Didn't they know that submitting multiple domains for the same topic to ODP helps their placements in the search engines and is called simply "abuse"???
What else does ODP consider really as a proof that someone is abusing the directory?
As I said in my recent post at
http://resource-zone.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=39908, this is the best way to let potential spammers know that they can try to abuse ODP and only loose some of their listings if they get caught.
And this is the best way to have all the legit ODP submitters feel they are treated unfairly (like I am feeling right now
)
In addition, they might well have submitted some of those to the ODP out of ignorance. While we seem to have a reputation of being harsh (usually circulated by those who have badly abused the system), we actually do give website owners the benefit of the doubt in a lot of cases.
I am trying to find the doubt in #1385 and #1330 cases but still cannot understand how someone can know and take advantage of ODP submissions for years (like the above companies) but still have doubts for his purposes. I could have a doubt that someone may not be aware that multiple submissions are not allowed if he submitted them at once.
I just found the following case earlier tonight:
Title: Greece Private
URL:
http://greece-private.com/
Category:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/Greece/Travel_and_Tourism/Travel_Services/Tour_Operators/
&
Title: Greece Taxi
URL:
http://www.greecetaxi.gr
Category:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/Greece/Transportation/Taxis/
So, this indivindual taxi driver that illegally - this means against all official Greek laws that prevent taxi drivers from offering such services - is offering tours to tourists, should not have any penalty that is taking advantage of ODP for the last few years? What should we say to this poor taxi driver at
http://www.athenstaxi.net/ that is listed only on a regional category, although he is established in Athens as the first one is???
According to your statement, the first driver should keep his main listing because of doubt. If someone was a friend of the second taxi driver that watched the first one's actions, he would advice him to duplicate his site immediately as the first one did with so much success and without any penalty and so on. What would anyone advice him really??? I am sorry but this does not sound fair to me.
I think if we want to keep ODP a directory of high quality, this kind of abuse should be dealt strictly according to the official guidelines. And the guidelines are there for everyone to read and then consider if they will try to abuse them or not.
Sorry if you consider this post an offensive one but this is not my intention at all. I just feel that ODP is the best directory worldwide and should help small people - like myself - compete in fairness with the big guys that take advantage of their strength and tricks they know to abuse it.
And I still believe that developing multiple domains in order to abuse ODP or even the anonymous surfers should be considered one of the worst kinds of abuse.
Thank you for letting me contribute to this great forum. This is called democracy and - as you already know - Greeks know it very well as we invented it
Dimitris
PS1- FYI #1331 is not reviewed yet
PS2- Please move this post to
http://resource-zone.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=39908 if you think this conversation should be continued there.
what you are describing is what we call directory abuse (among other names) and it is an excellent way to get none of the sites listed.
spectregunner was very clear to his comment. I invite other members to post their comments as well.
PS3- I will keep posting cases of multiple listings by the same companies and hopefully I will try to present examples that prove the high volume of this kind of abuse that ODP is facing nowadays.
