Guidelines for adding Multiple listings on DMOZ.

Hi All,

I was doing a little bit of research and noticed that are site on DMOZ with multiple listings, I don't mean like 2 or 3 but hundreds.

I was wondering if someone could provide some guidelines for submitting multiple listings to dmoz. In particular, one of the sites in question is allrecipes.com. They seem to have over 400 links in DMOZ targetting their subdomainss like soup.allrecipes.com , christmas.allrecipes.com etc.

thanks in advance.

 

There is a difference betweeen submiiting a site multiple times and an editor(s) adding a site to multiple categories. The first is considered spam, the second is under some circumstance acceptable.

Often a sites may be added to several additonal categories by an editor.

Some sites have been decided by editor consensus to be allowed to have many more than a few entries. For example imdb.com

In addition, the categories within Recipes and Cooking are much more lenient in allowing deeplinks (e,g, pages within a site)

How many deeplinks to megasites are allowable? [within Cooking]

A: You may deeplink large guides down to the most specific ingredient or collection level available, if there is a category for it

See also http://dmoz.org/Home/Cooking/desc.html

If your site features recipes or articles pertaining to cooking, the url of that article or page may be submitted for review to the appropriate category of Home/Cooking.

(which in fact gives blanket permission for multiple suggestions of pages in that area)

 

thanks macdesign ... I see you're from canada...i live in calgary. Would the creteria mentioned above be allowed in other categories like horse equipment, you can have english, western and australian horse equipment and within those categories you have saddles, blankets, halters etc.

 

No - that wouldn't be allowed. Shopping particularly discourages deeplinking.

Your site would be listed at the highest category in Shopping/Sports/Equestrian that encompasses your products. However, if you specialize in say English, but have a few stock saddles also - you could request a change to the English category. But your site couldn't be listed in both English and Western.

 

So deeplinking is allowed in Recipes and Adult but no where else?

And the logic for this again is....?

 

There are other places it's encouraged -

http://www.dmoz.org/Arts/Movies/
http://www.dmoz.org/Arts/Performing_Arts/Acting/Actors_and_Actresses/
http://www.dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/
http://www.dmoz.org/Health/Conditions_and_Diseases/
http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Education/Colleges_and_Universities/North_America/DeVry_University/

It's allowed everywhere - otherwise there would be no www.geocities.com listings in Shopping

 

Thats too bad ... why is it so? I'm just curious to know.

We are a fairly large tack store with over 6500 products - probably in excess of 20 or 30 departments. It would be nice to deeplink to things like:

farrier-tools.abc.com
supplements.abc.com
grooming-supplies.abc.com
bits.abc.com
western-accessories.abc.com
used-saddles.abc.com
etc

lmocr is there a way to perhaps make recommendations for the same principals that say the recipe area has to be applied to equestrian or other categories?

thanks
frank

 

So is it allowed everywhere EXCEPT Shopping?

 

It isn't encouraged in many other categories such as business and real estate. Most anywhere where there is an abundant amount of spam and abuse. ( Before you ask, I don't edit in adult so I won't answer any questions about that cat).

 

So let me get this straight: Webmasters can only submit to one category. However, editors can list a site page by page in many categories. Except in categories where there are a lot of spam submissions. Except of course those spam submissions wouldn't get listed in the first place.

So this means that editors can't deeplink in certain categories because they can't be trusted not to list spammy sites? Or because they can't be trusted not to take bribes from spamming webmasters? Or what?

Also, what is it the Holy Guidelines say to differentiate those categories where editors can deeplink from those categories where editors cannot deeplink?

Both you and jjwill have just told us it is NOT allowed everywhere.

 

Shopping has the strictest guidelines against deeplinking, for the most part we don't do it. I think lmocr meant that in certain cases it's allowed, such as geocities, aol, rubylane, and sites like that where the actual site is a deeplink, but each business should only have one listing in Shopping.

 

And what is the rationale for that rule in Shopping Real Estate and different rules (almost) everywhere else?

 

I'm only guessing, but I would imagine that it has to do with the size of that part of the directory and the maintenance that it requires along with the massive spamming of those categories.

 

Again, what has "massive spamming" got to do with the regulations about what sites can and cannot be deeplinked?

 

http://www.dmoz.org/guidelines/site-specific.html#deeplinks provides the rationale and http://www.dmoz.org/newsletter/2001May/deeplink.html explains more. Shopping is one branch where deeplinking is virtually unheard of and I said "virtually" just in case (I've never seen one and I started as a Shopping editor). In Regional it is rare. In Business I don't think you will find many. In most parts of Arts it doesn't happen. It is more a question of there being a few well defined areas where it is commonplace and exceptional elsewhere.

 

As a non-editor/outside observer, that statement seems more consistent with what I've seen.

It still leaves the question of why... Why are there different rules for different categories? This is part of the problem with Adult, if you recall.

Who is making these "exceptional" rules and why?

 

It has to do with the types of resources that are available in that area and how the listing will best serve the user (at least, it's supposed to be that way).

For example, in Games we deeplink to game review sites quite extensively. Most game specific categories will contain a reviews subcategory that typically contains deeplinks to reviews for the game from ign, gamespot, and a dozen other sites of that nature.

In Arts we deeplink to iMDB very heavily - in the same fashion as the game reviews in Games.

IMO, we seem to deeplink to sites that are "resources" but not to "comercial" sites (like sites in Shopping).

This obviously raises the question of Adult/Image_Galleries. Are porn sites resources or commercial sites? I think they're both. Free sites make money the same way that iMDB and game review sites do - advertising. However, Adult contains pay sites as well - which are definitely commercial.

 

If you look at that article I linked to virtually all Shopping sites fall into a Type 3 deeplink. Most deeplinks that are listed are Types 1 and 2 and are either hosted deeplinks or reference information sites.

If anyone asks when they can deeplink they are generally referred to that article. When it comes to Shopping sites I don't think anyone has ever made that judgement that a page within one has been exceptional enough to do a second listing - it is only theory. If I remember a thread related to this correctly if you had a general jewelry site then it would be listed as such. If, on the site, there was the biggest diamond in the world for sale then that would be pretty exceptional and an editor may (not will) list that page under the Diamonds sub-category. It hasn't, AFAIK, happened yet.

It can be a difficult DMOZ concept for some to grasp so many reference sites that can be freely deeplinked (subject to relevance and the quality of the deeplink) are "green tagged" by an experienced editall or meta editor to help the less experienced. http://www.dmoz.org/guidelines/editall/#urlnotes . I believe I only ever green tagged one site in over 2 years.

 

It should be stated that geocities sites shouldn't really be considered as deeplinks. Geocities acts as a hosting service, and the contents of its subsites are completely independent of all others usually. They have the format of deeplinks, but not the function.

Correct. (Before I continue, let me state that I am a former purely Regional/ editor.) Webmasters should submit the root url of a site to the most suitable category; they should not submit pages (deeplinks) of the site. Editors are usually encouraged to deeplink whenever they think the page can stand on its own as to unique content etc, and so submitters see all of the deeplinks and think it's OK to suggest subpages when it's not. The flip side of editors' having the authority to deeplink is that they often overdo it, at least imo.

There are deeplinks all over Regional; it doesn't take long to see them. Many exist in Education (individual university departments), Guides and Directories (whether general or especially travel), Maps and Views (most photo sites are deeplinks), News and Media, Tourism (any individual lodging page can be deeplinked from its parent like Starwoods, Accor Hotels, Four Seasons, Grand Hyatt, etc), and Weather (literally all deeplinks). In a way, I would prefer to axe many of the deeplinks because it tends to add bloat. Furthermore, many pages will have their urls changed after time resulting in 404 errors. Effort then has to be made to wade through the flotsam and do the corrections. However, those same pages should always be correctly available from the root even if there are internal changes to the site. Some editors list deeplinks way more than others; I tried to be more restrained in that respect.

 

The real point is that there should be consistent guidelines for ALL categories and ALL editors, not some, not even most, ALL. Anything else paves the way for confusion, misunderstanding, abuse, and perceptions of unfairness.