Went to update listing today and noticed site has apparently been removed

I may be interjecting myself in something I shouldn't but I see an inherent problem with categorizing a mom and pop virtual store in the same light as some spamming boiler room operation. I can feel the pain of people trying to make a living and being blocked by one of the most important resources on the web. I would encourage the odp to take a second look at how they select some listings. If a dropshipper is honestly trying to make a living and compete in the marketplace via a webstore, so be it. I don't see anything inherently wrong with this. I understand there are bad characters out there. But if you remove the whole crowd for a few bad apples, where would American commerce be today? Remember the old saying? "Nothing happens till somebody sells something". I personally know two firms that started out as virtual stores and became actual brick and mortar businesses. They could not have done it otherwise. I'm just trying to say that you can't throw the baby out with the bath water.

"If ODP had its way, I'm sure we would like to list somehow each and every product just once. Until then, we'll tease apart the who's-buying-what-from-whom-and-then-repackaging-it-for-resale-at-a-profit tangle as best we can."

If that is the case..then you should only have one insurance company listed, one real estate company listed...and so on...sorry, didn't want to read all the instructions on quoting...

If a dropshipper is honestly trying to make a living and compete in the marketplace via a webstore, so be it. I don't see anything inherently wrong with this.

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Neither do we.

We do, however, not believe that adding those types of sites to the directory benefit the users of our data.

Well, spectregunner...if the odp quit licensing it's directory to every tom, dick and harry that came down the info highway, you wouldn't get so many stressed people here. And they wouldn't be so severely penalized by it. Make it a true academic pure project and stop the process. After all, it seems you have become what you don't want to list. If google quit using you tomorrow...?

I personally see a big difference between a mom-and-pop business, where the mom and pop (and maybe other family members) actually take the initiative to create or invest in a business, buy tools and supplies, take risks, find customers, build a reputation, and continually work with their own hands and brains to provide a real service -- and these dispensable, interchangeable, indistinguishable "make money while you sleep" drop-ship order-taking websites.
A big difference.

So let's not call them the same thing. Let's call the real businesses "mom-and-pop businesses" and the other ... oh, I think "pseudonymous fright wigs for anonymous faceless giant corporations" pretty well covers the relevant facts.

Now, if a corporation that actually provides services (such as warehousing and shipping products) wants to describe the business that actually keeps its people busy, we'd be happy to list their website. Even if that corporation wants to maintain a zillion little order-taking sites, it is not for us to complain (to them). But it is that corporation's proper responsibility (and not ever, at all, ours!) to link to all its approved order-taking sites. We should NOT attempt to compete: after all, its list will always be much more up-to-date and comprehensive and authoritative than ours could possibly be!

So that's another aspect of indexing the web that we ought to leave to the people who can do it far better than us, and who obviously have a much stronger interest in doing it: after all, if it is worth doing at all to anyone, it must be worth doing to them!

If the people who are most interested in promoting their own doorways (and can do it most efficiently, because they have the complete information in hand) still think those doorways are not worth listing on their own site, then obviously it's not worth wasting OUR time to list them.

And finally, some passing comments:

That someone is "trying to make a living" is a pretty empty premise. Bank robbers, lawyers, assassins, used-car salesmen, slave traders, e-mail spammers, mercenary warlords, televangelists, drug peddlers, bribes-for-oil UN bureaucrats -- what evil cannot be wrapped in the rotten shroud of "I don't care whether it's right, I just do it for the money?"

As for the ODP "blocking" anyone, the very idea is ridiculous. The ODP's existance doesn't prevent any person from posting anything online, or promoting their website in any fashion whatsoever. The ODP merely tells surfers about some of the unique content that is available on the web: at worst, people who are depending on deceiving others into thinking copied content is original may be inconvenienced -- and in that case everybody except the deceiver is better off.

And as far as who we license the ODP to: that decision has been made, irrevokably. It is not in my hands, and it is not in your hands. All that is under our control is our own emotional reactions. (I am personally delighted to see effective aggregation and free publication of useful content: so delighted that I've neglected my own top content-development priorities to contribute to several such projects.)

Personally, I think the web has put forth equal ground for people that don't have much to get started in business. With the costs of store rentals, liability insurance, accountants feees, lawyers fees and the rest of over head costs, most people can't begin to start a business.

"pseudonymous fright wigs for anonymous faceless giant corporations" pretty well covers the relevant facts."

Wow, talk about painting everyone with the same brush.

Say Hutch, you left out insurance salesmen, doctors, drug companies, bankers, software salesmen....the list can go on and on...

I think it's very naive to think that the odp doesn't hold great power on the web being that particularly now during the period of bourbon and broke algorythms and google basing it's entire directory on the odp data. If listed in the odp, you pick up at least 200 backlinks and since you are listed in categories, are recognized as similar links. Boom, page rank. And being listed in the odp can put you head and shoulders above others in google. Rankings in the top 10 instead of being in the tail end of the pack. That translates into major traffic to your site. All because you are listed in odp. Promoting your site is made a whole lot cheaper and easier.
Do you seriously think that if google dropped the odp (which I think should be done) and got out of the directory business and started ignoring directories in searches and eliminating page rank passing from directories, that the odp would have more than minimal relevance on the web? If the odp did not license it's data and surfers had to come to the odp site for information, how much traffic do you think it would get? How far down would your spam drop? How many people would care if they were even listed.
I see it over and over that the primary way to get listed in the top returns in google is to be listed in the odp. This is of course true mostly for mom and pop, brick and mortar businesses that can't afford large sums for paid advertising and high overhead of an it department to spend hundreds of hours building links. So yes, not being listed is being blocked in many ways. I see sites that do not have much content that are listed in the odp and have been established for years on the web and are deemed relevant by google by these virtues. Check their backlinks. Most are directories based on the odp. Come on, if the odp quit sharing it's data today, it would be a vghost town, which is why it won't. But if google drops it, and quits allowing page rank from being transferred from directories, the odp would lose all relevance. No one would be angry with the editors for any reason. No more headaches for the editors. You could be left to edit in peace. Of course, since the odp is not a search engine, how much traffic would it have? A vghost town.

Just to prove my point I just did a keyword search under a certain category that is mostly websites for store fronts. Out of the top twenty, I deducted the news and classifieds triggered by the keywords and then searched the dmoz for each of the sites listed. All were listed in the odp. (Hey! the dmoz search engine worked!) So, tell me again the not being listed doesn't block you.
p.s. most of these sites were nothing more than vstore fronts. No real useful content other than product viewing.

texasville said:

p.s. most of these sites were nothing more than vstore fronts. No real useful content other than product viewing.

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If you found sites like these please report them to us and we will check and very probably delete them.

Well, if you are telling the truth, name the category, name the twenty sites, and I can flat guarantee that if you're right that'll be twenty less sites listed in the ODP.

If that's really all that's blocking you, smack yourself in the forehead and solemnly intone "I am healed" because your problems are over.

No more headaches for the editors. You could be left to edit in peace.

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We do edit in peace - this is really the only interface with the rest of the world and very few editors visit here. We try to explain how things work, not defend or debate how things work.

This whole thread is not so much about drop-shipping so much as unique content. Which is what we exist for. That is what lissa was saying earlier. By their very nature sites which promote someone else's wares neat don't provide unique content, simply another way of purchasing the same thing. Which is where search engines generally get it wrong. To find the 100 sellers of completely unique you-name-it a search engine will present you first with 25,000 sellers of the same you-name-it and you will be lucky to find one seller of the unique stuff every page. We try to avoid that and endeavour to list only one, the first or the most comprehensive. Thus we don't accept sites whose business model is based on affiliation with larger corporations who see the affiliates as a no cost (even they pay the cost) of marketing their one set of goods and services. Affiliation comes in many guises including affiliate links, MLM, and drop-shippers (aka order fillers). We aren't targetting the owners of the affiliate sites so much, though quite a few fall into the spammer category, but more the big corporations who use affiliate selling techniques, attempting to dominate the Internet using thousands of thinly disguised "independent" sites. The affiliates themselves are more often than not the victims also - providing free marketing often for minimal returns whilst costing them time, effort, and cash on paid-for advertising. I don't see it as our job to encourage such corporations by going along with listing their affiliates even if they fall into the innocent victim category.

We list tens of thousands of shopping sites belonging to people (ma's and pa's) who have gone that extra step of finding or making a product that is unique, not available elsewhere on the Internet. Often not in stores either. They don't invest huge amounts and don't hold huge stocks. But the business is theirs, the goods are theirs, and hopefully they will not get lost in our listings as they would do competing with 10,000 variations on the same theme via a search engine. They are the guys that deserve the breaks not those whose idea of hard work is to set up a website, add a few links, and wait for the cash to come rolling in whilst they sleep. Sometimes it is not the product that is unique - groceries are groceries and we list online grocery stores. But there is some other unique aspect - who they service, the range of products, and again we are talking about products they own and deliver themselves.

So back to the start - drop shippers are a variety of affiliate operation, they don't offer anything unique, and they act merely as an extension of the marketing department of the corporation they are affiliated with. Therefore we don't list 'em. Renting storage space in someone else's warehouse to store your own goods, using an independent courier to deliver, etc. don't make someone a drop shipper. But then again the independent distributor of mass market stuff is unlikely to make it in if we already have sites selling the same mass market stuff listed. Unique content is king.

This discussion made me curious about something, particularly the status of cafepress.com stores and their likes. It seems like a borderline case to me, because people who open accounts there, don't store, manufacture, process payments, deliver goods or even host their websites. All they do is upload pictures which are later pasted on products and then sold by the mother company.

Is creating a picture (sometimes serious artwork, sometimes not) considered unique enough for ODP? I'm truly curious about it after reading this thread. Especially since a quick ODP search on "cafepress.com" brings out quite a few of those affiliate stores.

leftie said:

Is creating a picture (sometimes serious artwork, sometimes not) considered unique enough for ODP? I'm truly curious about it after reading this thread. Especially since a quick ODP search on "cafepress.com" brings out quite a few of those affiliate stores.

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Creating a picture can be unique content (if that is the business you are in) but in this case selling the products is the business (presentation is almost never a unique value for a site).

It is a borderline case. Internal discussions have so far not made an absolute rule one way or another, so editors are still free to (i.e. have to) make an individual judgment on each one.

This is a very interesting thread. Who should be selling what, and how to be considered fo inclusion in the odp.
In my personal opinion, odp should not be a moral judge for the business practices. The drop shipping sites do exist. Many of them do good and honest business. Perhaps odp should create a category by itself where these sites can be listed. If odp editors feels so strongly about the ethiscs of listing such sites, they can have a 'buyer be aware' written on the category. Then let the buyers decide.

Better idea: anyone who thinks that thre should be a directory of drop shippers could start one. After all, since ODP doesn't list them, there is apparently a tremendous void to fill.

I'm always intrigued with the thought that the ODP cannot be what it wants to be, but that it should bend to the winds of popular opinion: be the copyright police; be the Texas Real Esate Commission police; abandon our concept and list the drop shippers and and content-free real esate sites. Perhaps we should abandon our editorial guidelines and instead of a title and description just throw in at least 25 keywords per site. Not hard to do if you are some sort of webmaster submission service.

Perhaps we should change our motto to:

The ODP: we don't care about content; you submit it, we list it.

There are a lot of commercial directories in cyberspace whose owners will completely prostitute themselves for the almighty dollar. This just happens to not be one of them.

odp should not be a moral judge for the business practices

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We aren't. As has been said elsewhere, it's not that the ODP objects to the business model (although individuals may hold their personal opinions), it is the lack of unique content that the ODP declines to list.

"If ODP had its way, I'm sure we would like to list somehow each and every product just once. Until then, we'll tease apart the who's-buying-what-from-whom-and-then-repackaging-it-for-resale-at-a-profit tangle as best we can."

If that is the case..then you should only have one insurance company listed, one real estate company listed...and so on...

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But in these cases, the unique content on a website isn't just the product being provided, it is also the services that go along with the product, and in many cases information about the people behind the services.

I can understand the bias toward "mirror sites" but what if the "dropshipper" has products from more than one manufacturer? What if the company handles all the returns and return billing? I am just curious how you determine the "value". Especially if the site has articles and information that do pertain to the public? Do you just object to way they do business, not having brick and mortar? Lord, Michael Dell startedout selling software out of the trunk of his car. If he had tried to get a website under these rules he would have just been out of luck.
As far as valuable content on the site, there are lots of sites listed on odp that have just the company, what they do and their products. Is that what is considered worthwhile content? I don't think there should be expensive bandwidth spent on too much extraneous content but I do believe there should be tips and information, helpful articles and links to other info about the merchandise for the surfer looking for information.
Understand, I do not have a drop shipping site. Have no interest in having one. Just think there should be a level playing field under the banner of free enterprise. Jeffersonian.

There is a level palying field, just not the one you want.

Our playing field consists of a set of public guidelines as to what we will or will not list. We make no effort to stop, slow, or hinder anyone elses' ability to create either similar or vastly different playing fields. Similarly, we strongly resist efforts to get us to change our playing field to conform to someone else's vision.

In fact, if a competitor wants to follow our rules for attribution, we'll allow them to seed their effort with our entire inventory of about 4.5 million sites.

What could be more fair that that?

And, to make it even better, if we see another directory suddenly becoming wildly successful, we are not going to change our "business model" in order to drive them out of business.

So if you don't agree with our vision, that is fine with us. If you disagree strongly enough that you want to do something about it, we'll help you get started with a few million free listing. Reaganesque!

And making that directory available to anyone is my main complaint. If it were a complete and perfect directory, I would agree with you. The problem is you allow it to be wielded like a bat for influence by allowing others to use it to value a website's worth. Face it. If you are not in the odp, then you must face a very long and expensive climb in the main search engine. It is because you license it that so many baclinks are available. And most of these independent directories only list odp. So you can't get listed with them. Denied. Unfair advantage for the competitors. You have to see this in human lives and resources. Some of us are trying to make a living too.
This has raised another problem on the net. Scrapper sites that are downloading the odp and using adsense. It's turning the net into a garbage scow of directories and causing many blind alley's in link hunting. Not your problem, right? But it is. If you are trying to make the net a better place.
It has also created a marketplace for odp listed domains on the block. A domain is listed and then sometimes sold for several thousand just because it is listed. The odp can't continually search for sites that have changed ownership and subject. Mistakes occur in the listing itself and the url. Face it. I have proof. Email me and I will prove it but then I want a public admission.
Sometimes mistakes are made in your listings. One editor likes a site. Another doesn't. It can be very subjective.
No notification of being declined. No appeals process. How would you even know if you have even been declined to appeal it.
How does anybody know that an editor just didn't like the colors on a site and was having a bad day and just said it wasn't up to par? Being told it can take up to a lifetime to get listed makes it impossible to track.
And that wasn't Reaganesque. Reagan was the "trickle down" theory. As in "don't _ _ _ _ down my neck and tell me it's raining". If you need explaining email me.

I can understand the bias toward "mirror sites" but what if the "dropshipper" has products from more than one manufacturer?

It's pretty safe to assume aggregating non-unique content is not an easy way to create unique content. It is absolutely certainly not a unique way of trying!

>What if the company handles all the returns and return billing?

>I am just curious how you determine the "value".

We don't do "value", just like we don't do "morals."

We do "unique content".

>Especially if the site has articles and information that do pertain to the public?

This is an issue that in practice doesn't arise.

If a site really has informative content, whatever advertising there is (whether it's adSense or affiliate links or pseudonymous order-taking) would be ignored, and the site would be judged on its informative content.

What happens much more often is that the kind of "articles" on such sites are rather promotional than informative (that is, we'd see it as an "ad banner farm with camouflage") and there would be no reason to list it, with or without the camouflage. (This is probably the Fad Spam Site of the Year.)

One more thing...you also made my point by saying that it would be neccesary to build my own directory to compete without being listed in the odp. Think of the expense of that.
Of course the links farms will sell me a listing. Surprise. There beginning content is the odp. I am just not in that business.

If you need explaining email me.

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We don't need explaining. We know what our goal is and which sites we like to list and which we won't. And I think our vision has been explained many times before, just reread this tread and many others. We also know we have no intend to become what webmasters and SEO-people want us to become. If you have problems with the way same search engines are using our data you should complain with those search engines.