How do I fingerprint a dynamic URL?

Getting a URL changed

• Recently we submitted a change to Dmoz of our very old URL (www.truthlover.com) to our current address (www.truthbook.com) . Somehow we can’t seem to get the change instituted correctly. We still show up as Truthlover.com, not Truthbook.com (If you look up the word Urantia on Google, you'll see our URL comes up as Truthlover.com, not Truthbook.com). They mistakenly changed the title of our site to Truth Book but not the URL to Truthbook.com. In fact we really didn’t want the site title changed we wanted the URL changed. And even so, our name is Truthbook, not Truth Book. When we submitted the URL change, we also submitted a description change. They did not use our description as suggested but edited it to something that does not reflect the new features of our site plus the URL was not changed correctly. So now we are in worse shape than when we started because the site title is not at all what we want. Today we went back and once again submitted only a URL change from Truthlover.com to Truthbook.com. We hope that they will get the URL right then we can request a description and title change. The question is, what did we do wrong, if anything, in attempting to change our URL? We really need our URL correct and cannot afford the wrong URL. Is there something else we should be doing to get this fixed? Additionally, the search for links to truthbook.com shows only one link to our site yet we know there are many! Before we asked for the change, when we searched to see how many sites were linking to ours there were many links.

• Answer:

  Hi again, As far as I can tell, nothing has changed at all, and you are still waiting for your changes to be acted upon. Your original query was asked in early June: http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=214001 At Open Directory, the very bottom of a category page has the date when it was last edited - in this case it says May 7, 2003 http://dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/New_Age/Urantia_Book/ The description is the same as it was last year, as archived at archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20020916021725/http://dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/New_Age/Urantia_Book/ Your Options ------------ 1) Wait. Open Directory is run by volunteers, and it can sometimes take a few months for them to edit a category - I used to do it every 2-3 weeks, when I was bored. And they just had a week of being unable to edit their categories: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum17/1685.htm Although the category you are listed in is small, a single editor maintains all the categories listed under New Age: http://dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/New_Age/ ...as well as helping out with other categories containing 14,000 more entries: http://dmoz.org/profiles/anelder.html 2) Submit your change a second time. When I was an editor at Open Directory, it annoyed me if people were repeating their submissions, and with this editor being so busy, I don't recommend this. 3) Contact the editor directly. On the editors profile page there is a link to an email form. I do not recommend this approach either, as being pushy tends to have an adverse effect. 4) Volunteer to be an editor. Obviously they could do with some extra help. Unfortunately when I followed the links it said they weren't accepting any applications - a sign of an editor being greedy, and controlling more categories than he/she can handle. So, my advice is to just wait. If another 6 weeks go by and still nothing has changed, resubmit. You have done nothing wrong, you are just noticing one of the problems associated with getting something for free. Regarding backward links, Google shows links from 4 sites, one of which is yours: ://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etruthbook%2Ecom Google doesn't show all the links it knows of - usually it only lists those with a PR of 4 or higher. The best way to find links to your site is to enter its URL in the searchbox at AlltheWeb, and click on "Find all XXX external web pages that link to" in the results. They have 609 links to your site listed: http://www.alltheweb.com/search?q=%2Blink.all%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthbook.com+-site%3Atruthbook.com&c=web&cs=utf-8&co=1&no=off&l=any Best wishes, robertskelton-ga