Status of http://www.hotels-of-choice.com

Please can you tell me if the site http://www.hotels-of-choice.com submitted to the category http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Northamptonshire/Towcester/
is anywhere near being included in your excellent database. It was submitted 21 March 2003.
Do I need to revise the site in any way for it to be included?
Thanks

Which is the main Premier Iberian website? There seem to be a few different sites offering services from that company.

http://www.hotels-of-choice.com is an online product from Premier Iberian. They do have another website http://www.golfinthesun.co.uk which sells golfing holidays, however this is quite separate from the service they offer with Hotels of Choice, which is merely holiday accommodation for anyone and is not specific to golfing holidays.
They have advised me that neither site is their main website and both are equally important.
Please could you add both websites to your database?
Thanks for your help

>They have advised me that neither site is their main website and both are equally important.
Then advise them that when they _have_ a main website, we'll consider IT for listing.


>Please could you add both websites to your database?
In that business?

You should advise them it is far more likely that neither will be added. They are not in an industry characterised by honesty or integrity in website promotioning: accordingly, our guidelines are strict and our sympathy is strait.

"You should advise them it is far more likely that neither will be added. They are not in an industry characterised by honesty or integrity in website promotioning:"
I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean by this? They are completey honest and do not offer anything that they don't provide.

"accordingly, our guidelines are strict and our sympathy is strait."
Absolutely, and that is why being included in your database is very important to our client.

It is unlikely that my client will ever have a website devoted to their company "Premier Iberian" because this is unneccessary considering they have two business outlets one of which has the website offering Golf Holidays: http://www.golfinthesun.co.uk
The other offers holiday accommodation in Iberia
http://www.hotels-of-choice.com

Please could you let me know if there is anything we could do to help these sites gain inclusion in your database.
Thanks

"You should advise them it is far more likely that neither will be added. They are not in an industry characterised by honesty or integrity in website promotioning:"
I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean by this? They are completey honest and do not offer anything that they don't provide.

Click to expand...

Hutcheson was talking about the industry in general, not your site or company in particular.

What hutcheson was getting at was that travel-related categories are among the most aggressively spammed in dmoz. Many companies have between two and two thousand separate domains (just the other day I found one with at least a hundred) promoting various parts of the same service. Hence in travel categories, there is very little tolerance of allowing one company with two or more domains, even if the content on the two domains is separate. It's a bit like having a domain about apples and a domain about oranges - different subject matter but both about fruit. The dmoz guidelines are designed so that your company doesn't get an advantage (two listings) just because it chooses to split its content over two domains, where another company with the same content has just one domain and one listing. In terms of getting a dmoz listing, it would be best for you to have one domain, or to make one of your two domains the 'primary' domain with a link to the other domain so that we can list the primary one.

Hope that makes things clearer.

I endorse John Caius's translation.

As for your client's "honesty", your reply reminds me of Lincoln's story about the man who was charged with killing twelve children and a dog. In his defense, he triumphantly "produced the dog alive."

As for "honest", there are many different kinds of deception. Not providing the services offered is, in our experience, NOT a common kind of deception, and we really don't check for it. But operating the same business under multiple names is an extremely common kind of deception in the travel industry, and so we watch for it very closely.

Tell your client that although his services may well be performed honestly, the site promotion technique you had recommended to him is fundamentally dishonest; as a result, he will have to pay for changes to his website to recover his own reputation.

>the site promotion technique you had recommended to him is fundamentally dishonest; as a result, he will have to pay for changes to his website to recover his own reputation.

Which site promotion technique we recommended?

I understand all you are saying, but I can vouch for my client in that they only have two websites on the internet. If they were to prioritise, they would choose http://www.hotels-of-choice.com with a link to the other site as John Caius suggests.
Thanks for your help

It's a matter of information. Surfers should know who is making allegations about facts and offering to provide goods and services. Then they can make informed decisions about whether to believe those allegations and/or accept those offers.

There are many possibly legitimate reasons for owning multiple domains, and we try not to prejudge that issue. So long as:

1) There is a main site that links to all of their subsites;
2) The main site clearly identifies the proprietor and gives adequate contact information;
3) All the subsites link back to the main site as their "master home page";

then we don't need to have an immediate presumption of deliberate deception.

Many spammers are fully aware that the kind of disclosure I suggest would be fatal to their hopes of getting one listing, let alone multiple listings. And so many SEO experts are suggesting that you always conceal them. That gives spammers and fraud perps two kinds of advantage: (1) it's harder to tell them from the legitimate sites; (2) it's harder to relate their reputation to their sites.

The ODP is often accused of favoring the "big guy" over the "little guy", although of course we list more "little" businesses than any other directory. But we actually try to favor the "real guy" (over the transparent mask and fright wig for some affiliate program) and the "good guy" (over the anonymous scamster.)

So look like who you are; it's the first step towards becoming a "real guy."

Thanks for all your help.