>I can pretty much guarantee that the site will provide the cheapest term life premiums in the UK.
This, um, is just about the least unique claim an insurance agent can make. (I don't know if it's true, and not being in the UK I can't check and don't care. But you have to understand that a claim like this on the site will not be considered unique content.)
>We have negotiated discounted premiums that aren't available anywhere else with each of these 7 companies.
>In all our pre launch trials, no one has beaten any quote we have given. This alone I would hope is reason enough for the site to be useful to your users.
Unfortunately, this is not going to be something that editors will check. So it's not something that will be considered unique content.
>I am aware that many so called insurance sites are just satellites which all point to the same few companies.
The difference between this and a site that points to the same 7 companies ... will not be immediately apparent to the site reviewer.
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There is a fundamental worldview difference here. In certain industries (like insurance and real estate), the dominant information model is "conceal and confuse". The primary players make most of their money simply off the fact that people CAN'T find the cheapest service. Their efforts to increase profitability are therefore primarily (if not exclusively) directed towards making it harder for people to find the cheapest service that fits their needs. They can then offer "services" that consist primarily of revealing the information they've gone to so much trouble to conceal in the first place.
The ODP's model is "index the sum of human knowledge" -- that is, make it easier to find the important information. It is understandable -- and inevitable -- that dmoz.org does not fit comfortably within industry perception of acceptable or valuable content; and often, vice versa.
Your website is caught in the crossfire, but from the ODP perspective serves as obfuscation, not the gods of knowledge or communication. The "knowledge content" is precisely what you've carefully concealed: WHICH insurance companies are offering coverage, and WHAT rates they offer. (I understand that your contract with the Lords of Mordor requires this.)
What you are doing instead is acting as an information SINK (from the surfer's point of view) -- taking away information. This (again, from the information-model point of view) is not a feature but merely an aggravation to the original crime. And information sinks are properly regarded with great suspicion and abhorrence by editors because one information sink looks just like another. We can't tell whether there are 10 companies gathering separate lists of contacts, or just one company with 10 doorway pages. We can't tell whether it will be used for bringing plagues of salesmen down upon us, or for fraud or identity theft, or even for some honorable purpose.
And in your defense, you start talking about your business model. The problem is not in YOUR business model but the WEBSITE'S information model.
Finally, and lest you take this personally, you cannot possibly imagine the abhorrence of such pages that one would have have after spending hours hunting down hundreds of variations on the same two or three pages. (I don't HAVE to imagine it. If I heard about the death of some of the webmasters who create such pages, I would travel all day to stand in line to barf on their graves. I wouldn't even have to use a finger: just thinking about those sites is sufficient stimulus. And I'm not alone in this.)
So we've discussed, and agreed, that the ODP's ultimate goal is not served, nor does it contribute to the enthusiasm of the editing community, to list "lead-generating" sites. At the end of the day, it's that simple.
