www.portfolios-and-art-cases.com

On March 26, I went looking for an appropriate category to add our URL. I chose Shopping/Travel/Luggage/Business/, but saw that it had no editor. On the same day, I applied to be an editor for that category. To date, I have not received a reply.

About 4-6 weeks ago (I lost the exact date due to a computer crash), I decided I had better just submit to a relevant category that already had an editor. I believe I submitted to Shopping/Office_Products. So far, no reply.

Yesterday, I tried to submit again, this time to Shopping/Office_Products/Supplies/ which does not have an editor.

Can anyone tell me if my submissions have been received and, if so, how long it might take to be reviewed? I'm also wondering if resubmitting to different categories will create a problem for us.

Somebody is selling a very similar product

http://www.rtinnovations.com/

That is our original site, which was our first attempt to have a presence on the web. We have since hired a professional Yahoo Store designer to create our new site, the one referred to in my post. The new site is more complete and is a full e-commerce site, which is listed in Yahoo, Looksmart, and hopefully soon in ODP. We have no intention of submitting the original site to ODP or any other directory, as we are putting all of our resources into the new e-commerce site. The old site remains online because many of our customers already have its URL, which was printed on our business cards and product literature.

As long as www.rtinnovations.com wasn't and isn't submitted to the directory, it should have absolutely no effect on the placement of your new site. ODP does not punish people for having multiple versions of their site, just for submitting them.

Mr. Newton is right, in general and (so far as I can tell) specifically regarding this, um, case. An ODP editor might (depending on the circumstances) see one submitted URL but list a different, "optically equivalent" URL. But in fact rtinnovations.com seems not to have ever been listed.

I am speaking cautiously now, because I am very far from imagining all the evil that lurks in the heart of affiliate spammers, and there might be a very good reason why neither of these sites can be listed. But ... the existance of rtinnovations.com is NOT adequate reason to NOT list PAAC.com.

But if you want to make sure that rtinnovations.com doesn't supplant PAAC.com, then do the following:

-- On the home page of rti....com, put a big notice like: "We've expanded our site -- please visit our new digs at PAAC.com." (It would be best, though perhaps impractical, to put that on a header of EVERY page, to capture the old visitors for your new site.) [This will let editors know that given a choice, you'd prefer to have the new URL listed. It will also make it very clear that there is no URL-hijacking or page theft involved between two sites with similar substance.]

-- Make VERY sure that all content at the old site is also available from the new site. [If this is not done, an editor MIGHT make the very reasonable assumptions that RTI.com is the corporate site but it has subsites with vanity domain names for each of its product lines. In that case, we might list the corporate site, for the sake of our users, regardless of the webmaster's preference.]


(I don't see a reason for that to happen

Thank you for the suggestions. Is there any way of verifying that my site is actually in the queue to be reviewed?

Yes, there is.

Oh, and, no, the site's not waiting for review there.

What to you recommend I do? Resubmit a third time? I'm concerned about doing this, since my last submission was just a few days ago.

If so, should I go for the most specific category (Shopping/Office Products/Supplies) which does not have an editor, or the more general category (Shopping/Office Products) which does have one?

That might depend on what you thought was wrong with the current listing.

<added>I don't think Shopping/Office Products is the right place anyway. The listing is in the much more specific Shopping/Travel/Luggage/Business/ category.</added>

<edited again>"Supplies" are basically consumable goods -- paper, red tape, etc. I think "Equipment" would be the better subcat. (No sites are listed directly under Office_Products). So...I added a @link from Equipment to Business Luggage.

Again, a user's confusion about ODP's taxonomy points up a previously unnoticed hiatus in the structure. And we get to make the structure better for everyone. Thanks.</edited>

I guess my next step should be to submit to the Luggage/Business category. Should I be concerned that it doesn't have an editor?

>Should I be concerned that it doesn't have an editor?

No. As it happens, it's about as up-to-date as any category.