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I understand that many senior editors of DMOZ often visit this board. Can someone clarify if a price comparison web site for a perticular product will be treated as affiliate web site.
Its basically a price comparison search engine, which has its own local catalog, where users can search the exact product they are looking for (restricted to only one product type). Once they select the product, they can click the comparison button, and prices from various online retailers are listed, WITH LINKS TO BUY from those web sites.. these links DO contain afiliate ID.
Since there are others who are doing the same stuff (about 30 in the subcategory of that product) and since it has affiliate links, should I assume that the site will be denied based on "not unique" and "affiliate" criteria?
Am asking this because I have been waiting for almost 4 weeks now to get listed.
Every SEO company I have talked to has a DMOZ editor on staff.
I believe.
Can I get an Amen?
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as the quality content keeps coming in, it doesn't really matter. There are a good amount of checks in place to combat spam. Probably not as many or as fast as some would like, but you can't please everyone.
That is one of the most absurd and ridiculous things I have ever seen on Webmasterworld. Most people don't give a rat's ass about e-commerce sites, and use the Internet for information and communication. There is more than the money changers defiling the temple of the Internet. Info sites can't afford PPC.
BTW: what has all of this got to do with it's policy towards affiliate sites?
About DMOZ being worthless. Do you think that the huge unreviewed caches of sites is there becasue people just want to be in DMOZ. Has anybody ever made a sell from DMOZ? DMOZ is a place to get PR without that it is nothing.
Most people don't give a rat's ass about e-commerce sites, and use the Internet for information and communication.
It wasn't until someone figured out how to make a buck off the internet that the internet took off, and continues to fly, on wings made of U.S. currency.
If that's a rat's ass, put me down for two servings, please.
;)
Why not?
I find that a very curious statement. If you wanted a link from a definitive site about bridal gown designers, they probably wouldn't give you one unless you designed bridal gowns... right? If you wanted a listing in a Houston business directory, you wouldn't get one unless your business was in Houston.
The ODP is a directory of websites with unique content. You won't get a listing there if you don't have the kind of website we index. By policy, that doesn't include affiliate sellers.
No one's trying to force you to change your business plan. If you're making money hawking somebody else's products online, more power to you! Heck, if you have twelve mirror sites and that increases your sales that's fine too. But don't get mad at the ODP or the Bridal Designs R Us homepage for not being interested in linking to you. Your site simply isn't the kind either organization wants to direct its customers to.
Spend your effort on other promotional techniques. My personal opinion is that the necessity of an ODP link to a business' success is rather overrated anyway. I'm sure you could fairly easily find another site of equivalent pagerank that DOES want to link to you. Any time you spend trying to make your site more appealing to the ODP (or trying to sneak it by us) could have been spent making your site better for your customers and looking for more appropriate links to you from other sources. IMHO.
I see little evidence of that. Correlation doesn't prove causation. It looks to me more like the Internet took off about the same time computers fell low enough in price that a large enough number of people were able to buy them. The money changers then flocked in following the people, not the other way around.
It looks to me more like the Internet took off about the same time computers fell low enough in price that a large enough number of people were able to buy them. The money changers then flocked in following the people, not the other way.
That's a really good observation. I live in Ground Zero of the internet, San Francisco, and my view of the internet starts from around the early 90's.
Yes, there were millions of people using the net, but only because corporate America saw a way to make a buck. Thus, the first funding went to the companies who gave you access to it (AOL), let you browse it (Netscape), or categorized it (Yahoo). It was the billions of dollars being spent on the future of the web that caused the web to take off.
Before corporate America became involved it was pretty much a bunch of college students goofing off on University computers, most famously at Stanford (which gave birth to Yahoo).
Yes, corporate America was chasing the people, but they were chasing tomorrow's people, along the way building out the infrastructure to accomodate the people. The people weren't going anywhere until Corporate America built the road.
It was the People who were following the path set down by the "money changers."
Eh, what does it mean anyway?
That dmoz wouldn't be anywhere but for the grace of Corporate America (Netscape)?
Or perhaps the real basis for dmoz's non-profit state was because it was neutered so that there would be less competition for Yahoo? Yahoo was once a non-profit directory, too.
Kind of interesting to see that the ODP, the little step sister to Yahoo, has become the internet's version of Cinderella.
I am not talking about getting links from another sites, i do not have a problem with that.
And i am not trying to sneak my site by you to be listed on the ODP, and i am not writing this and hoping that DMOZ will list my site, I do not give a rats as* about DMOZ.
And to be honest with "Human do not do it better" because when a human get involved at this level you get the greed and body body thing and that is when you start seeing favoritism and site get listed because the SEO or the owner of the site is an editor.
This is the way i think and it is not because my site is not listed but it just does not make any sense to tell me that since i am selling computers i can not be listed because they are sold by someone else and that is consider affiliate site.
If you only list unique sites you would not have that huge number of sites in your directory.
And one final thing flicker, did you become an editor because you have plenty of free time or list a site on DMOZ, some of the directory has a year waiting list, is that due to lack of volunteers or is it after the editor gets what he/she wants they stop editing until the next time they have another site to be listed?
You're the one who complained about the ODP not including your affiliate site, Night_Hawk. That's our official policy. Our users aren't interested in seeing 500 sites selling the same thing with different page designs, any more than the bridal gowns directory would be interested in seeing a site about computer sales. Different websites are interested in different types of links. I'm not sure why that is so hard to understand.
>some of the directory has a year waiting list
That's primarily due to spam. Editors are volunteers; if they can find quality sites on their own more quickly and easily than they can slogging through a spam-drenched unreviewed queue, fewer of them are likely to choose the unreviewed queue. If people would stop inundating us with submissions of sites they already know we do not want (affiliate sites, mirrors, deeplinks, clumsy attempts to redirect our audience to their porn sites, etc.), the wait would be less.
>If you only list unique sites you would not have that huge number of sites in your directory.
You underestimate the Internet. There are millions of unique sites out there (by 'unique' I mean shopping sites that are offering their own goods, fan sites which are offering pictures that aren't on 1000 other Britney Spears pages, educational sites that are offering information which is not copied from anyplace else, and so on.) Even focusing only on the unique sites, our directory is not complete. So there's no reason for us to start in on the duplicate stuff even if it DIDN'T irritate our users. The web is a big place. (-:
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Disclaimer: This post constitutes an unofficial, personal opinion not necessarily shared by other ODP editors, the university, or my cats.
They can do that now.
>>some of the directory has a year waiting list<<
Waiting for what? A listing? No site is guaranteed a (fast or slow or any) listing, and no listed site is guaranteed a permanent spot.
