Site Submission Status

Hello,

We submitted the following sites many months ago now. I don't have the exact dates, but it has been a long time.

To category: http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/Mexico/States/Jalisco/Localities/Puerto_Vallarta/Travel_and_Tourism/Travel_Guides/ we submitted http://www.johann-sandra.com/vallartaindex.htm

To http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Outdoors/Scuba_Diving/Underwater_Photography/ we submitted http://www.johann-sandra.com/hawaii/diving/

and to http://dmoz.org/Sports/Cycling/Mountain_Biking/Trail_Information/ we submitted http://www.johann-sandra.com/mtnbiking/cotrailindex.htm

Can you assist us with the status of these submissions? We didn't submit them all at the same time, I only just found this forum!

Thanks.

Johann & Sandra

The first two pages you give weren't listed because they were deemed not to offer enough content to be listed as subpages of an already listed site.

I think you may have a typo in the third url. I can't find it either in our submissions or on the web.

He has 20+ entrys for the same web site.

http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=Johann+and+Sandra%27s+Web&all=yes&cs=&cat=Regional%2FNorth_America%2FMexico%2FStates%2FJalisco%2FLocalities%2FPuerto_Vallarta%2FTravel_and_Tourism%2FTravel_Guides

I can't seem to find the root web site listed anywhere.

The main site is currently listed in Recreation/Outdoors/Scuba_Diving/Personal_Pages/J/, though that might change soon.

The number of deep-links listed is now considerably smaller.

After consultation, the base URL has been moved to Society/People/Personal_Homepages/S/.

Wow! I guess I shouldn't have asked! We hope you all understand that our site is very diverse and covers many different topics, and that is the only reason we have so many listings. Our site is basically many separate sites under one domain name, which is only true because we are a personal site without the resources to secure more domains. We aren't trying to spam the directory or anything, we just feel that our site's listing under a variety of topics would be beneficial for the directory and the internet community as a whole. Compared to other sites, ours is listed only very few times in the directory. A search for Encarta yields 358 results. About.com is listed over 3000 times!

Thank you for your prompt responses, and we respect your opinions about the pages in question, but please don't penalize us for offering such a wide variety of content.

We hope you continue to list Johann & Sandra's Web as a valuable listing in the categories in which it currently resides.

Johann & Sandra

I understand your situation, and I realise that your site covers many topics but, having reviewed them, I feel that they don't provide sufficient value to the directory to merit listing all of your pages.

Take for instance your 'soccer' page (http://www.johann-sandra.com/soccermain.htm) which was listed in Sports/Soccer/Directories/. The page consists of a small amount of text which would be of no interest to anyone other than those that know you, and three links to vagely related sites. The page looks more like a place holder for the two banner ads than a genuine source of information. We would serve our users far better by just listing the three links from that page.

The same could be said of your New York page (http://www.johann-sandra.com/nyindex.htm). It's interesting reading, but it's just a description of your stay there. It doesn't provide any useful information to anyone that doesn't know you. Yes there are lots of links, but they are just littered throughout the text with no attempt to organise them. The only organised links are the affiliate travel links in the left-hand margin.

Most of your 'area specific' pages are just advertising copy taken from another site, with a little bit of your own text woven in here and there, and a load of affiliate travel links in the left-hand margin. If this was all you had, I'd assume the site was a scam designed to get lots of listings in the ODP.

Looking a bit deeper, I can see that you do indeed have some unique and useful content. I've left in your page about Eskilstuna (http://www.johann-sandra.com/eskilsindex.htm) because the category is low on content, and you do provide a little bit of information on the area, as well as some images. Even with all the affiliate links, this is the sort of deep-link that we are happy to see. That's why Encarta and About.com have so many listings, because they contain useful information that isn't already present in the category.

Your site is not being penalised for having a wide variety of content, it's being selectively de-listed because some areas of it have very shallow content.

OK,

You have a good point with the soccer site. Anyone, including me, can agree with you there. Is it a problem to have affiliate links on our site? Most sites I visit have these to some extent, or some type of advertising. We've all got fees to pay, you know. I didn't realize that this would be an issue in being listed, as long as your site was more than just affiliate links.

We have many areas with very useful information on them, such as http://www.johann-sandra.com/hawaii/molokai that haven't been listed in the directory, and some of our weaker pages, as you've noted, are listed. We've also tried to submit the top-level pages as a representation of the site area, rather than just standing on their own. For example, perhaps some of our home travel pages aren't fabulous on their own, but when you combine it with our message boards, photo galleries, link directories, and other pages about the topic that are accessible from this page, we felt that it was a useful site for your visitors.

I hope you don't take this banter as arguing your decision, because I don't intend it to be. I respect your authority to run your directory as you see fit. I'm just trying to get a gauge on two things:

1. Are we blacklisted from submitting any other pages to the directory?

2. Does the exact URL submitted have to be rich on content itself, or can it be the home page for a site that has additional useful content? For example, some pages have a splash page with no content at all, but once you get past that, you can find interesting material. This is the approach LookSmart took in listing our sites. They allowed all our top-level pages (such as the pages we've been discussing), but disallowed the directory pages or supplemental pages. DMOZ seems to take the opposite approach. Is this accurate?

We would very much like to be able to list sites with DMOZ as we finish them, but we don't want to seem like we're spamming either. We're afraid that when our pages such as:

http://www.johann-sandra.com/mtnbiking/
http://www.johann-sandra.com/hawaii/molokai/
http://www.johann-sandra.com/msister.htm
http://www.johann-sandra.com/hawaii/diving/

have not been seen fit to be listed, that we're either blacklisted, or we aren't submitting the correct pages, or something else?

Thank you for your patience in dealing with us. We, like you, like the directory very much and want it to offer quality content. Your points in your last post remind me to post more content on some of the portions of our site!

Johann

>> Is it a problem to have affiliate links on our site? <<

No it isn't, if we made that a rule we'd have to delete 99% of the entries we currently have. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> We're happy to list useful content rich pages that have a few affiliate links on them. We won't list a collection of affiliate links with a bit of content to justify their existence.

As I said in my previous post, your Eskilstuna page has been left in because even though it has affiliate links, it also has some unique content. On the other hand, your Cancun page (http://www.johann-sandra.com/cancunindex.htm) has been removed. The text on it is entirely copied from a travel brochure, and I can see no reason why you would do that other than to hang those two banner adverts on it, and get more visitors to your other affiliate links. Supporting unique content with adverts is fine. Creating pages just to put adverts on is not.


Judging your Hawaii Molokai sub-site is a difficult job. There are lots of pages there, but the text on them comes straight from a travel brochure and isn't particularly useful. There are several links on the front page, but we would probably be better off listing each one of those, rather than your page. You do have unique content in there (a photo gallery and a trip report), but it's not easy to find. In addition I don't like 'slide show' photo galleries, but other editors may feel differently about them. I don't have the time needed to go through the category judging your site against what is already there, so I can't come to a conclusion. I'll leave it for a more qualified editor.


&gt;&gt; I hope you don't take this banter as arguing your decision &lt;&lt;

Not at all, I can see that you're just trying to understand how we work. If you had tried to justify your 'soccer' page I might have thought differently. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />


&gt;&gt; Are we blacklisted from submitting any other pages to the directory? &lt;&lt;

Absolutely not. We'd be happy to look at any new content you submit, provided that it is unique, and it adds value to the category it is submitted to. A page of content on an obscure village in Sweden would be very likely to be listed. But it would be a different story if you submitted a page of content about Las Vegas. There is already a massive amount of information in the Las Vegas category, and you'd have to provide something pretty special to make it worth listing. The general rule is that whatever you provide should be similar in richness to the best that the category currently has.


&gt;&gt; Does the exact URL submitted have to be rich on content itself, or can it be the home page for a site that has additional useful content? &lt;&lt;

We're happy to list the entrance pages for sub-sites if there's good content in there. As long as it is clear to the editor that this is the entrance to a collection of useful information, they'll list it as such. However, if the editor finds that only a small amount of content in the sub-site is useful and the rest is filler, they may decide to list just the useful bit.

Thank you for your detailed response. I think I have a good understanding of what you're looking for now.

It hurts, though, that I spent months researching and authoring the many sections of the Molokai site, entirely my own words, and you accuse me of copying from a travel brochure. I have thoroughly researched the net and found no other Molokai site that can match the information or content of ours, yet it is deemed "not useful" information. I guess I don't know what useful information would be! (Kind of discouraging...)

The Cancun page is an entrance page for our trip report, Cancun Directory, Cancun Slide Show, Cancun Message Board, Cancun Scuba Diving, and Cancun Snorkeling pages (all accessible from this page), nothing more.

I appreciate your time and patience in assisting me with my questions, and I wish you good luck in the future. I hope you will go into future submissions with an open mind and not assume that just because there is content worthy of a travel site that it is copied from somewhere else.

Thanks again!

Johann

There are two distinct styles of writing on your site; type 1 is "we went here, we saw that, we did this, it was fun", and type 2 is "X is a beautiful city, built on the stunning river Y, with a complex population of Z". After looking through several of your type 2 pages, and finding conclusive evidence that the content was copied from elsewhere, I stopped checking. When I came across Molokai and saw that it was a type 2, I just assumed it was copied like all the others.

If you really did spend ages researching Molokai and adapting your writing style to look totally different, I would have to ask, 'why'? Do you think that your friends and family want to read a travel brochure for the place you've just been to? Wouldn't they prefer just to see the images and an account of what you did there?

Perhaps I've become cynical after years of seeing people trying to sneak dodgy content past us, but I find it hard to believe that you've spent months working on glossy brochure text and a directory for a place that you've only visited once, just to amuse your friends and family. It looks to me much more likely that you've created all of this content just to get search engine listings for your affiliate links.

Regardless of all of that, your Molokai link is currently not listed. If you were to submit it, as I said above, I would leave it for an editor that knows the local content better than I do. When they see that it is all your own work, they will treat it accordingly.

I understand your cynicism. We didn't create the Molokai site for friends and family. You're right on the money. You're also on the money with our different types of pages. The difference is between and introductory page and a trip report. A trip report, by definition, is "been there done that". An intro page is, by definition, an introduction to the place discussed.

A little history:
Our initial goal was to provide trip reports and photos for our family, and our site was set up strictly for that purpose (like most personal sites are). As we began to get more and more e-mails and questions about the places we visited, we decided to expand the site to offer a little bit for everyone (hence the link pages, message boards, and the intro pages).

We still have the photos and trip reports in our Hawaii site for our family, but because of the feedback we've received about our site, we've decided to make it into a travel-destination oriented site, which seems to please our visitors. Of course our family doesn't care about the travel information, only the things about us. The rest of the public probably doesn't care much about us, but seems to appreciate the information they can access to help plan their vacation.

We felt that the combination of the travel information and the personal touch was a niche for us, and provides us with not only the opportunity to share our experiences with our friends and family (many of whom live in Europe), but also a chance for us to interact with many people from around the world who we would never have been able to get to know without our site's diverse setup.

Our site doesn't exist to make money, just have a little fun. Only in the past few months, after our site began to attract nearly 1500 unique visitors a day, did we add any affiliate links. We finally figured that if there was that much interest in our site, that we might as well. The idea was to garner enough to pay for our fees for the year so we could afford to continue the site.

It's always good to hear feedback. Our site generates almost exclusively positive feedback, which can lead to tunnel vision. Your negative feedback has given me some ideas and some things to think about. Thanks for your interest in this matter. Feedback of any kind only helps make the web a better place for all of us.

Johann