Updating a government website listing

[russco]

Hello,

 

I work for six local government councils in the south of England, for a portal website which represents each of these councils.

 

A couple of years ago, an ex-employee submitted descriptions of the site to Dmoz which are now out-dated.

 

A month or so ago, I requested that the description used of our site be changed to something more generic, which applies to each of the partner councils, but the change has not yet been made.

 

It is very important that these listings are changed, as Google appears to be using Dmoz for descriptions of our site, and several partners are questioning why our Google listing contains out of date information.

 

Can anyone provide an estimate of how long it takes to update a listing?

 

regards,

 

Russell

[jimnoble]

Update requests are prominent and most editors give them priority. There are currently no unprocessed UK ones. I imagine that your proposed changes didn't conform with our Editing Style Guidelines and were declined.

 

If you're unhappy that Google prefers our descriptions over yours, you might like to investigate the NOODP metatag.

[russco]

Update requests are prominent and most editors give them priority. There are currently no unprocessed UK ones. I imagine that your proposed changes didn't conform with our Editing Style Guidelines and were declined.

 

If you're unhappy that Google prefers our descriptions over yours, you might like to investigate the NOODP metatag.

I have no qualms at all with Google referring to your descriptions.

 

Our site has been indexed with you under possibly three different categories, which I understand is not allowed. When I requested an update, I requested it in all three categories, is this possibly a reason why the request for updates was not granted?

[jimnoble]

Our site has been indexed with you under possibly three different categories, which I understand is not allowed.

It is at our option.

When I requested an update, I requested it in all three categories, is this possibly a reason why the request for updates was not granted?

Highly unlikely.

[russco]

Is there any way to determine why the site was not updated?

 

My requests conformed to the editing style guidelines.

[jimnoble]

No. We no longer discuss specific websites here. We tried it in the past but it was never productive.

[russco]

What would you suggest is the best route of action to take in order to ensure that your description of the site becomes accurate once more?

[jimnoble]

I guess that by 'accurate', you mean 'in accordance with your wishes' .

 

For Google's snippet, use the previously mentioned NOODP metatag.

 

For ODP, use the update request mechanism. If we agree with your proposed amendments, we'll implement them. If not, not.

[russco]

I guess that by 'accurate', you mean 'in accordance with your wishes' .

Presently the description returned is not accurate. I'd go into detail, but I think I'd be in breach of this forums terms and conditions.

 

I have resubmitted, this time with a more detailed explanation for why the changes have been made.

 

Fingers crossed!

 

Incidentally, thank you for your time. I appreciate that you must be heavily swamped with all sorts of ludicrous requests.

[russco]

Hello again,

 

I'm slightly confused. It looks like the listing for our site has been updated in each of the individual places where it's listed (e.g. Regional: Europe: United Kingdom: England: Dorset: Government), however when I search for the site in the ODP, the returned matches are still the old ones. When I click on them, I see the new descriptions.

 

Is this just a caching thing that will take a while to update?

 

Thanks

[chaos127]

What's shown on the category pages represents the current state of our data. The search function currently runs of a separate database that lags behind this. When things are running properly, it's usually about a week behind the real data. However, there are some further delays at the moment because of ongoing system work. It'll catch up eventually though.

[russco]

Okay that's grand.

 

Thanks for all your help.

[russco]

What's shown on the category pages represents the current state of our data. The search function currently runs of a separate database that lags behind this. When things are running properly, it's usually about a week behind the real data. However, there are some further delays at the moment because of ongoing system work. It'll catch up eventually though.

 

It's been nearly three weeks now, and the search function's database still doesn't seem to have caught up? Is it just a case of waiting?

[jimnoble]

Is it just a case of waiting?

Yes.

 

Considerable systems changes are in progress and taking engineering priority. The current search databas is dated Tue Jun 22 14:50:00 EDT 2010 as is shown at the bottom of its result page.