Submission status of shmootcase.co.uk

Hi,

I submitted my url to dmoz last summer and was wondering if there is a problem with the content as it hasn't appeared in your listings yet.

I have made sure that the content of this site meets with all standards of accessibility and honesty.

Shmootcase.co.uk has become an obsession of mine and I have invested a huge amount of effort in both providing an excellent service to visitors/holiday accommodations owner and in the hope of receiving recognition from major search engines - not too easy - very competitive area.

Please do let me know if there are any areas I can improve on.

Regards, James Middleton - www.shmootcase.co.uk - the UK holiday directory.

[readme]x[/readme]. We need to know where you submitted the site.

Regarding submission of shmootcase.co.uk

Hi,

Sorry, not sure at all when I posted it; may have even done it twice for all I can remember. I think it would have been July of last year.

Here is the link to the catagory that I would have sent it to:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/Uni...Tourism/Accommodation/Guides_and_Directories/

Here is the url itself:
http://www.shmootcase.co.uk/index.php

Regards, James

I meant:
http://dmoz.org/
Regional/
Europe/
United_Kingdom/
Travel_and_Tourism/
Accommodation/
Guides_and_Directories/

No information is available yet. You may bump this thread in a month for more information.

Side note: we have something in common here: hotel directories are somewhat of an obsession with many ODP editors also. (And, I bet, also with Google engineers.)

www.shmootcase.co.uk

Do you think I should try and resubmit...or would that be too risky?

You know, I think the reason why people can get so obsessive over this particular field is because it is so difficult to get into....big challenge!

James

"No information is available yet." normaly means there is no information about the suggestion because the last time the site was suggested is less than one month ago. Please follow hutcheson's advice "You may bump this thread in a month for more information."

And that isn't the reason why we are absessive about these sites. I think the reason that maybe 99.9% of these sites are spam (= unwanted suggestion as described in our guidelines). This means that for the 0.1% of real sites it can take very long to be reviewed as we have to filter out all the junk.

Just a comment - the concept is useful in theory, but when I performed some sample searches I got plenty of zero results, especially when it came to self-catering, and very limited results otherwise in counties I thought would be teeming with choice.

For me it makes it borderline - there aren't a lot in the UK I've seen doing precisely what you do. On the other hand there are a gazillion less feature-rich with plenty more listings. So I might not list it - I might use it to gather hotel URLs for individual listing, I might skip it for a few months in the hope it would be far more comprehensive at a later date. But you first submitted you say last summer so what chance of that?

When it comes to this sort of site, getting zero or very limited results when I am expecting dozens, is not good news either for surfers or for editors. And before you say I looked in the wrong places or did the wrong searches, that is something they all say - you have 60 seconds to convince the editor who reviews it (or a surfer using it) that you have a comprehensive enough choice of listings to make it worth staying on the site. The test is a completely random search. If it is going to yield zero or very little, don't offer it as an option.

You have a choice with accommodation directories:

a) put tens (or hundreds) of thousands of £££ into producing the most comprehensive national site covering all type of accommodation; or

b) focus - build the best directory for campsites in Essex, or holiday cottages in Sussex. Then expand out from there.

A broad brush on a national scale thins your content out to the point where it is debateable in terms of usefulness. Ambition is often the downfall of sites like this. Sad but true, I've seen it a hundred times. The ones that work well and I have little qualms about listing are the ones that have followed a sensible and sustainable growth strategy and I get the impression that maybe you have focused too much on functionality (which is great) and not enough on content (not so great). Get the two balanced well and you might have a winner there!

Best of luck and please take my comments as constructive.

Thanks,

I will take your comments as being very constructive.

The site currently holds 860 accommodations...this isn't enough, but it is expanding by between 5-15 aday.

I have revised some of the functionality. Putting the 'filter by catering/selfcatering' on hold until the database is a little fuller, I hope, will improve the way in which the data is presented.

Kind Regards, James

Provide a list all feature - 860 is a fair few, and it would demonstrate there is content. If you looked at a single DMOZ category off on an obscure twig in isolation you might say DMOZ was sparsely populated but it is easy enough to navigate through to see where the 4 million actually are

Added: or regionalise the search rather than by county. If I am only going to get 11 B&Bs in London then stretch it to London and the South East. In DMOZ we create a category when we get a few sites for it and when it has built to a sufficient level we split it. So no category should ever be too large to handle and none should in theory be empty.

Shmootcase

Thanks oneeye. I will have a look at implimenting those changes....dash! you looked at London - for some reason I have had very little back from there

All the best, James Middleton