listed in ODP - invisible in AOL

itīs been almost a full year!

[heini]

since I got my first listing in ODP for my main domain. More than 20 ODP listings as well as a yahoo directory listing have followed, but still none of my pages appear in AOL. My sites are in german, Iīm not sure if this makes any difference. I have qualitiy content on them, editors on directories and portals like them, they are all doing very well on Google and Fast. What would cause AOL to completely ignore ODP listings?
Any ideas appreciated!
Thanks

[Brett_Tabke]

Are they in the World top category?

[Mike_Mackin]

heini

AOL doesn't use the entire RDF dump.
There are certain categories that AOL chooses not to show their members. You may be in one of those cats.

[heini]

Sorry for not responding earlier!

>Are they in the World top category?
They are in world/deutsch/Kultur/yyy.
I would be interested though to get into AOL.de, so that should be the right place to be in ODP.

>There are certain categories that AOL chooses not to show their members.
Like what? Mine is culture, and my main domain is only some 15 months online but a well established site with lots of inbound links. And in AOL.de there are a lot of small, nearly private sites as well as my main competitors showing up for my KWs. They have made it, and Iīm pretty sure most of them didnīt pay for it.
Could it be anything technical, like special metas missing? I use plain html, no frames, no dynamics...
Has anybody tried successfully to contact AOL ? Should I try?

[Mike_Mackin]

>Like what?

Like categories that they deem inappropriate for their younger members. Your subject matter would not be one.

[vis]

"I would be interested though to get into AOL.de, so that should be the right place to be in ODP."

Looks like AOL.de is Inktomi based.

[heini]

Hello vis
In the db of aol.de youīll find the most obscure sites, made by people who wouldnīt dream of submitting to intomi. Those sites get included via ODP listings or ... I donīt know how. Besides I think itīs agreed on here, that AOL.com picks up ODP listings besides using paid listings, so it wouldnīt make much sense for aol.de only to go for inktomi.

[vis]

AOL UK, for instance, only uses Inktomi so I wouldn't be suprised if AOL DE is the same.

Inktomi doesn't automatically include ODP listings but an ODP link when your site is in Inktomi will stop the index page from being dropped. In the 'golden' days, Inktomi may well have spidered the obscure sites you mention but these days I think the best you can hope for with a free listing is to get your index page in.

[heini]

vis
there is a discussion about the db of AOL.de
here [webmasterworld.com]. I think itīs clear, that AOL uses inktomi. When you say that an ODP listing helps a site not beeing dropped in AOL, either ink or AOL itself must spider ODP. If they do so why wouldnīt they index the pages listed in ODP?
This is getting confusing...

[makemetop]

All the searches I ran carry the 'powered by Inktomi' logo but the DB looks very old and using a European filter. Some of the sites I found are not in the current normal DB and are 404 pages. I think it is coming out of a very different DB to standard Inktomi - but Inktomi it is.

[heini]

makemetop
would you suggest that inktomi picks up ODP listings, then spidering the sites? There are some not so old pages in AOL.de, which I canīt imagine beeing submitted to inktomi, which in germany is a not very well known device.
I have anyhow submitted some pages to canada.com im march, which are indexed. Still no sign in AOL.com or AOL.de.

[vis]

Just to clarify matters.

The only AOL site that directly uses ODP listings is the US com site.

AOL.De only uses Inktomi listings which is a completely separate database from the US one.

As Makemetop points out the Ink database on AOL.De is filtered- I can barely recognise it from my standard SERPs.

If your site is in the ODP it won't automatically be added to Inktomi as their spider has all but given up crawling. It will be added to AOL.com but only if it is in a category they use as per the previous posts.

If your site is in Inktomi then it should show up in the AOL.De pages, however I don't know if AOL.DE updates regularly. AOL UK does a reasonably efficient update every couple of days.

I can't really guess at why obscure sites have made it in. If they are not old sites left over from Inktomi's crawling days then they might have been very lucky and been crawled.

[heini]

vis,
thanks for this clarification. Itīs indeed a question of how often AOL.de updates. The latest pages I found are from fall 2000.
So the route for me to take will be submitting all pages to ink (via canada seems to work pretty good) and hoping for AOL.d to update eventually.
You have been quite helpful!