multiple internal pages to be submitted?

[Guest]

Hi

 

I have a directory of UK employment sites. It is constructed with pages covering job types and area categories. We have all the site under the one url... http://www.jobs1.co.uk and avoided multiple domains as just a spam technique. However, for a page such as 'london recuitment agents' to compete well it would be sensible to have it listed, along with the 'Northern Ireland' page etc. in the appropriate category. The format of the pages is similar and some sites listed on the category pages appear in other categories as well.

 

My concern is that I am accused of spamming the ODP if I submit several deep links to several area categories. At the moment my home page is listed and I obviously do not want to jeopodaise that!

 

The issue is perhaps an important one. Many sites have 20 doorways cleverly hidden and submitted. By choosing to be one domain, do I lose the advantage of having links from the OPD going directly to category pages and thus helping them to compete with doorway domains?

[hutcheson]

This is probably the kind of deeplink that will not be accepted.

 

Please feel free -- make that please feel urgently requested and encouraged -- to rat out the doorways. Pick any editall or catmod (preferably one who is listed on some UK Business categories) and send the dirty details.

[mngolden]

ODP has a policy against listing mirrors, doorways, and affiliates, and these types of sites are removed when found. Not having those as part of your site is considered a plus. /images/icons/smile.gif

 

Our deeplinking policy is a little harder to explain. If someone has created a single site for Underwater Basketweaving, Hamster Olympics, and their toddler's Mud Pie Recipes, we *really* hope they have split their site out into subpages as it's hard to classify under one category. (We do get sites that are this diverse.) So a site like this may get deeplinked to the relevant subpage in the respective category.

 

Your site - if it can all be classified as "employment in UK" - would not be a good candidate for deeplinking as that is how it is/would be categorized.

 

Hope this clarifies. /images/icons/smile.gif

[Guest]

Thanks for your feedback, I will leave things be!

[Guest]

What if anne had pages related specifically to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales? Surely she could enter each of these into their respective region of the UK?

[Guest]

Cabdriver -

Exactly! It seems unfair that I cannot do this and thus have category pages achieving a good relevant link in.

 

As I said earlier, by not going the spammy doorway site route, but instead making my directory a comprehensive UK one, I am being put at a big disadvantage. Many of the sites I list are unique to Scotland and in the Scotland category, but I cannot have that page listed in the Scottish dmoz section, because other areas of my site specialise in Welsh sites! This is despite being probably the most comprehensive point of reference for Scottish recruitment sites. So, some spammer makes a half hearted doorway site for 'jobs in Scotland.com' ....gets listed and blows me out of the water. How does that make dmoz a quality directory?

[totalxsive]

Anne, if you want to email the URLs of these multi-URL sites then I'll look into them. We are always on the look out for these types of sites in the UK section of the directory - normally we're able to get them but some slip through.

 

I have looked through the site and I don't feel that this would be one that we would deeplink - a single listing in the UK Employment category would suffice. However, you may be able to submit to the Perthshire category, on the account that your business is based there.

[hutcheson]

>>What if anne had pages related specifically to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales? Surely she could enter each of these into their respective region of the UK?

 

Surely, in fact, not.

 

"We list Web Sites, not web pages."

 

Surely if the website covers all of the UK, it is well represented by a listing in the category that covers all of the UK: and any submitter interested in following the submittal policies will find the bit saying "pick the ONE BEST CATEGORY for the SITE" very easy to follow.

[Guest]

Would not a normal viewer, living in Scotland, seeking an employment site like anne's get to the stage where they arrive at http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Business_and_Economy/Employment/ and see that they then have the following choice

* England@  (49)

* Guernsey@  (6)

* Northern Ireland@  (10)

* Scotland@  (34)

* Wales@  (11)

or click on any of the 13 sites listed in that sub-directory. If any of these site owners had followed your advice it is possible that none of these sites had anything to do with Scotland.

I would have thought that the guy living in Scotland would click on the Scotland link, but in doing so he certainly wouldn't find anne's site.

[Guest]

hutcheson

>>We list Web sites, not web pages<<

 

I can appreciate that this was the gaol, but you can find hundreds of sites on dmoz that are pages. I mean like my_domain_name.com/productname.htm or town.htm

 

Just do a search in dmoz on 'smoothhound', for example. They have over 300 listings for, basically, the same site. You could probably find a lot more in that category - accommodation.

[Guest just_browsing]

Interesting how "anne" has metamorphosed into "cabdriver" !

 

Anyway....

 

"Just do a search in dmoz on 'smoothhound', for example. They have over 300 listings for, basically, the same site. You could probably find a lot more in that category - accommodation. "

 

 

I tried a search for the URL on DMOZ and got 340 links. Its not a well known fact but they also have at least two other active mirrors of the whole site, which I did not search for, you may like to.

 

Whilst I have a lot of sympathy with that observation, my advice to you would be to mail privately to one of the active metas on this board details of the URL and the links that it has, plus a detailed analysis of why you think that they should not be there (for example the deep link may point to a specific hotel on your suspect site that in fact has its own web site that has not been listed)

 

It may take some time for them to get round to examining your evidence, but you may be assured that it will be looked at In the fullness of time)

[Guest]

Actually, the good news answer to

Would not a normal viewer, living in Scotland, seeking an employment site like anne's get to the stage where they arrive at http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Business_and_Economy/Employment/ and see that they then have the following choice ...

 

is that “normal viewers” do not search ODP. Instead they use one of the several search engines which use the ODP database. The site will come up in the search results based on its title and the words used in the description.

 

“Normal viewers” are also likely to be very broad and imprecise in their searches, at least according to the search engine newsletters I read. Who knows what they are going to look for? It could be “I want a job in the UK”, “UK jobs”, or “Scottish employment”.

 

In any event, I believe the key for the site being found is its being listed ANYWHERE with a reasonable description which includes any of the keywords someone might use when they search Google or wherever.

 

Folks searching generally don’t go to the ODP and manually run down the category branches. So, although we all try to put sites in the correct category, if some nuance of a site is overlooked and it winds up in a slightly less optimal category, babies are NOT going to die, houses are NOT going to burn, and the unemployed are NOT going to condemned forever to the dole. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

 

I think we can rest assured that the site will be found even if it is listed only one time and in a slightly less-than-optimal manner.

[totalxsive]

We have had discussions about Smoothhound before, and concluded that it was a resource worthy of deeplinking, because the deeplinks offer something that very few other sites do (a complete list of hotels and guest houses in the area). The site which is the subject of this thread only had a handful of jobs for each area - hardly a complete list.

 

We are trying to sort out the Smoothhound mirrors problem.

[Guest]

just browsing

>>Interesting how "anne" has metamorphosed into "cabdriver" !<<

I feel sure that editors will join me in reminding you that sarcastic and ill-informed comments like this are not appropriate in these forums. This will not be the first time that you have been reminded of this.

[Guest]

The only reason I joined in this discussion was that I identified with anne's position.

I had my site listed in dmoz recently in http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/*******

I then realized I should have submitted to each of the England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales sub-categories, because my site has specific and different content for each of those countries. I have since submitted to those four sub-categories and am awaiting results.

Now I am regretting having done so, in view of comments made above so far. I'll just have to wait and see.

[alpine]

We have had discussions about Smoothhound before, and concluded that it was a resource worthy of deeplinking, because the deeplinks offer something that very few other sites do (a complete list of hotels and guest houses in the area). /snip/ We are trying to sort out the Smoothhound mirrors problem.

 

I'm sorry to disagree, totalxsive, but this is just blatantly incorrect. For example, a search of my local area reveals a sketchy summary of certain hotels, with incorrect information and spelling mistakes. When a customer tries to make a booking the following message comes up:

 

"We do not currently have an e-mail address for the xxxxxhotel, so they will need some way to reply to you. Please complete at least one out of your telephone number, fax number or postal address."

 

Despite the fact that this site ineptly copies out inaccurate information from who-knows-where in order to gain more than 340 listings on doorway pages, and despite the fact that it apparently has mirror sites listed, and despite the fact that its only functioning links on some pages are to affiliates, and despite the fact that it has zero local information outside its inadequate and inaccurate hotel details, it continues to enjoy "special treatment" in its class.

 

I am quite shocked that you say that ODP editors have discussed this site and decided to take no action, especially when mirrors would apparently (and rightly) be grounds to expel many (most?) other sites.

 

Just in case anyone is concerned, I am neither anne nor cabdriver... <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

[Guest just_browsing]

"We are trying to sort out the Smoothhound mirrors problem. "

 

I have sent totalxsive a list of the 5 mirrors that were fairly apparent on Smoothhound with just over 100 further DMOZ entries

[Guest just_browsing]

" [smooth Hound] continues to enjoy "special treatment" in its class."

 

Whilst I tend to agree with your statement, I still believe that you should follow the advice I gave in an earlier post in this thread and make a private report to a meta on the site in question with facts and figures. Its unlikely that a full public airing will solve the individual problems.

 

I have drawn attention to sites with similar sorts of mass listings in countries across the world - its not unique to the UK. Sometimes something happens, sometimes it does not (or I am still waiting!), however I will still continue to supply details to metas where I believe editor abuse is apparent, or something strange is happening with site rejections/acceptances.

[totalxsive]

The Smoothhound issue is now been dealt with by the meta editors, from what I can gather.

 

Alpine - I appreciate your views but I personally was not involved in the decision regarding Smoothhound - the decision was made some time ago. Maybe we will reconsider it now, maybe we won't.

 

However, I'm reasonably sure we'll stick to using just one of the Smoothhound mirrors and put in methods to make sure that it stays that way, to avoid duplication.