SEO Search Engine Ranking Blog

Feb. 16th 2004 was a very big day - my first dmoz complaint:

When I first submitted ESL go.com to DMOZ, I submitted it as a student resource. I’ve added over 250 pages since then including a good number of teacher resources. For the past few months I’ve been submitting changes to DMOZ; I want to be in the “English as a second language” category rather than the “student resources” sub category.

The main reason I care is that this might boost my link popularity; the sub category pages have lower page ranks. The other thing is that I want my sight to be listed appropriately. It’s no longer strictly a student resource. However, DMOZ has been ignoring me for a while now.

Anyway, get your category right the first time when you submit to DMOZ (and I suppose this holds true for the Yahoo! directory as well) because you may never get a second chance.

What can I say about the last 4.5 years? Dmoz still sucks horribly. Submit your sites anyway, but don’t expect much.

I even offered to help edit the ESL section since obviously the editors there are falling behind. They turned down my application because it was too big a category for a new editor. I may not know much, but I do know that you are f*cking up if you ask people to volunteer and then you tell the volunteers you are not accepting applications for the position. I have no problem if they want you to apply to a smaller category first as long as they tell you. Idiots.

The problem with doing business on the web is that any idiot can make a website. And then these idiots interact with other webmasters.

If you look at my directory, you can see fairly easily that it is a paid inclusion directory. It says so on the homepage. It says so in the add site info. It says so on the link submission page.

So anyway, business as usual, I send out a PayPal money request to sales (at) fi-adv.com because they submitted to my directory. My typical money request message says something like ‘thanks for the submission; it was approved and will be added to the directory after payment.’ I sometimes add a not about how approval is actually somewhat rare since I reject most submissions.

I get a response today: “We don’t know you, nor does or company owe you any money. Don’t email us again or we’ll have our attorney’s contact you.”

I’m not in the mood for idiocy so I reply:

Actually, you submitted your website to jtrotta.com. I have this email as well as the IP you submitted from on file. When you submitted your site you agreed to our terms of service.

Now if you don’t want to be listed in jtrotta.com, that’s fine. If you threaten me with your lawyers one more time I will be contacting your web host and domain registrar to report you for spamming my directory.

So here’s a question: do you want to pay for a listing in jtrotta.com? Here’s another question: do you want me to reject your submission because you are unwilling to pay? Here’s my last question: do you want to continue being a jackass by making stupid threats?

For a company that claims to be a bunch of advertising pros, they sure seem lacking in both professionalism and smarts (not that my response is a lesson in professionalism). I’ll let you know if I hear from his lawyers

Also, I resisted the temptation to point out this guy’s grammar error. Can anyone find an error in his email?