Status of http://www.katiesgiftboutique.com

Submitted Katie's Gift Boutique on Dec. 18, 2002, to the following category: http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Home_and_Garden/Accessories/

Just checking on the status of this submission. Thanks for all your good work!

Please give us at least a month till asking - review times are much longer in many parts of the directory.
You would save us lots of work this way.

OK thanks. Some sites that discuss search engines and directories mentioned that it would take on average 1-2 weeks for a site to be reviewed in ODP. That's why I was checking. From what I've read in this forum, I can see you guys are swamped. I'll check back in a few weeks. Thanks again.

No, AVERAGE is more like 3-6 months.

The actual time varies wildly. I have reviewed and listed a site within 5 minutes of submission (I was working on unreviewed sites in that category when a new site just appeared.) I've heard horror stories of sites languishing for 18 months or more (that usually takes a combination of user error, heavy commercial sites with little surfer interest, AND editor error--but it happens.)

Our target rate is 3 weeks - that's what we quote in the public documents. But that can vary wildly.

Great - thanks for the info. This forum is terrific, by the way, and very informative. I didn't notice a way to get to it though, from the ODP site. I stumbled onto it by way of another web site.

Link from ODP/DMOZ to this "ODP Public Forum" is in the third paragraph of Open Directory Editorial Guidelines.

Just wondering where this site now is in the queue, or whether it's been rejected. I realize you guys are swamped, but thanks very much for any info on this.

http://www.katiesgiftboutique.com

Your site was denied as all or the majority of the content is from Specialty Merchandise Corporation. ODP no longer lists representatives of multi-level marketing orgnanizations, such as SMC. While not specifically an affiliate, the site does not have unique content--as there are literally thousands and thousands of sites out there selling the same 3,000+ products. You can refer to the guidelines at http://dmoz.org/guidelines/include.html#affiliate, Sorry.

Oh, shucks. Well, I realize there are thousands of sites out there flogging the same 3000 items and I found many of them listed in the DMOZ directory so I didn't think we were terribly off base. Just for your info, the products on the Katie's site are NOT from SMC and the owners are not involved in an MLM thing (as far as I know!). The products are from "Sunshine Wholesale". Would it make any difference if they were to include products from different sources? Thanks anyway.

The products originate from SMC, so they are part of the MLM structure. I have seen on some sites where they offer them "wholesale" to others but the origination point is the same. Because SMC products are sometimes hard to identify, as many of the sites look completely different, I imagine some sneak through soley because the editor who evaluated the site did not realize the content was from SMC.

To answer your question about including other products. It would make a difference if the majority of the products offered were unique in content. Therefore, if only a few of the products were SMC (which is not the case involving this site) and the majority were unique it would likely be listed. Just because there are *some* SMC products wouldn't make it a requirement that the site not be listed.

SMC products themselves are not the problem. Personally, I love some of these and have shopped the catalog. The problem is just that the exact same products exist on an unbelievable number of sites and are therefore the content is not unique.

Thanks - you learn something new everyday. I can't stand MLM. I had no idea that's what these products were. So now that the site is not going to be in ODP, does that mean we will probably not show up in AOL, alta vista, etc? Or -- it's just going to take FOREVER to show up anywhere.

I'm not (by any means) an expert on listings in other search engines. You can find who uses ODP data here:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/Open_Directory_Project/Sites_Using_ODP_Data/. You can also submit a site to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.

Good luck, hope that helps some <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" alt="" />