Site Rejected for Incorrect Reasons

Two or three months ago I submitted my site to the Murcia Real Estate category of the ODP and I have not been listed. I recently asked a friend of mine Paul in the UK, who is an editor for the ODP, if he could tell me why the site hasn’t been listed. He checked my website address and said the reason was that, "This site mirrors the actual Polaris World website".

I know I'm not supposed to ask for another review but my website is <URL Removed> and the “actual Polaris World website” is <URL Removed>. My site contains about 160 pages of unique content which I have designed, written, and in some cases photographed, myself over the last couple of years.

Leading Authorised Agent for Polaris World
I run one of the leading authorised estate agencies for the largest residential developer in Spain, Polaris World, in the region of Murcia. We have been awarded “Golden Partner” status by Polaris World because of our success and the service we offer to our clients. Some of my pages contain details of the same properties that Polaris World sell direct – details of which will also appear on their website - but even here all of the descriptions are different and more thorough and more up-to-date on my site. And the service we offer to our customers – including the pre and post purchase advice and incentives - are very different.

Unique Content and Products
We also sell resale properties on the existing Polaris World Resorts which belong to individual owners. This is a business in which the developer Polaris World is not involved and is therefore a service which they do not offer to customers who go direct to them. If you look at <URL Removed> you will not find any information or references to reselling a property and there is stacks of info about this on my site. This is a really important service for the people who are buying properties at Polaris World to know about and to use if they want to sell or buy a “second-hand” property rather than something off-plan. See the following page for an example of our resale listings: <URL Removed>

Widest Range of Products on the Web
We are a specialist agent that deals with properties located on the seven Polaris World Resorts (currently about 12,000 dwellings) and we offer a broader range of properties on these resorts than any other agent or site on the web, and much broader than those available on <URL Removed>. People buying or selling on the Polaris World Resorts need to know about the resale properties and resale agents or they are not getting the full picture.

In addition the site contains information on the local area, travel and resort information which is unique - many of the images are from photographs which I have taken with my own camera. I don’t know how someone can say that my site is a mirror – it doesn’t even look vaguely like <URL Removed>.

If no one here can help, can anyone tell me who I can contact to get this looked into?

Thanks and regards,

Andrew

Hello Andrew,

We aren't really able to discuss specific websites (why the url's were removed from your post), but generally speaking, the situation you describe is a result of the directory's Real Estate Guidelines (worth reading carefully).
The general idea being to avoid flooding with sites containing little or no content.

If your site is indeed rich with content not found on the head office site, I would suggest that you make this fact clear, both by writing a good title, clear description and perhaps in your (or similar) case(s) a brief note explaining the situation at the end of the description.

Then suggest it once more in the correct category. The word used is suggest, as the directory is not simply a listing service.
We are human edited, and if the site is indeed significantly different, it has every chance of being listed when an editor reviews it again; however the time-scale is not fixed, and the result cannot be guaranteed.

Seeing that you have a friend who is an editor, perhaps he'll be able to check that the description and choice of category are guideline compliant - In my opinion, more than that would probably count as an affiliation...

This forum is a reasonable place to discuss general ODP issues, as many editors take the time to read and reply to posts here.


FYI: the term 'mirror' is used in a wider sense here than a piece of silvered glass... it basically means a site has either the same or very similar content to another, often owned, operated by or representing the same people.

Some help

In some real estate categories there are a large number of submitted websites, many of which appear to offer similar (or virtual mirror) services by acting as agents for the same developer.

Determining which of these websites offer a genuine value is not as straightforward as it might seem, but unique content and a good “About” page “that focuses on the company in question” (and not the developer) is one way of establishing this.

It also helps to re-submit the site! Otherwise it cannot be reviewed again.