Many directory owners complain of the enormous amount of crap that gets submitted to them, and in some case decent sites submitted but with very bad titles and descriptions increasing the workload on editors. Certainly the biggest contributor to these big workloads for directories is auto-submitters. I have recently seen some new directory owners inquiring how you know if a site was submitting using auto-submitter software, and directory submitters inquiring on wherther they should use auto-submitters. Well, I have been in the directory business for a little bit now and have gotten very good spotting the auto-submitters. The following are a few signs that a submission was auto-submitted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.portprophecy.com/pics/rejected01.jpg The above site is the usual auto-submitted crap. The crazy looking title and the description which is nothing but keywords give it away. Auto-submitters often just grab meta tag information for title and description, thus giving you the kind of submission as above. Site was never even reviewed. I just insta-delete. If you can't take time to submit the right way, I won't take time to review you. NEXT: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.portprophecy.com/pics/rejected02.jpg OK. This one is a little sneakier because the title, although certainly keyword-stuffed, doesn't look so bad as my first example. And the description is an actual sentence! But a quick check of the site reveals both the title and description are ripped from the site's meta tags. Delete! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.portprophecy.com/pics/rejected04.jpg Next, we have another glaring sign that someone is not using the legit method of submitting. I have my directory set to not accept submissions to the top category. How in the world did this idiot get submitted to the top? Any sites getting submitted to the Top cat get instantly deleted/banned, and I always check the name/email to make sure I find other sites they submitted to delete/ban. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.portprophecy.com/pics/rejected05.jpg The above site may or may not have been auto-submitted, but the user decided he didn't need to give me a description. Insta-delete. For paid submissions I will take the time to clean up titles and add descriptions, but I will NOT take time to write a description for a free submission. If you won't take a minute to write a good description, I won't take but a second to delete your site and move on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.portprophecy.com/pics/rejected06.jpg The above site may or may not have been auto-submitted, but the submitter certainly did not read my guidelines. Like so many others, I do not allow sub-domains or internal pages for free submissions (due to being overwhelmed by spammers). No need to even view his site. Insta-delete. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.portprophecy.com/pics/rejected07.jpg Again, the above site may or may not have been auto-submitted, but the submitter certainly did not read my guidelines. English sites only. Clearly this isn't English. No need to even view his site. Insta-delete. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Free submissions are a pain and I end up rejecting 90% of them (Almost no one does the kind of things shown above in paid listings). But eventually you get good at spotting the culprit sites, thus saving time to move on to reviewing sites that do the right the thing and deserve a listing.
Feel your pain. The description for the title in probably the most frequent offender. It really couldn't be that hard to make it impossible to submit a subfolder, subdomain or more than a 5 word title. A mod like that would save much grief.
All my directories in the submit page, the submission guidelines, clearly state that ONLY featured ads can be in the top categories. All free and/or other paid ads are only in sub-categories. Yet people constantly submit to top category without paying. New directory I just put up says again, for adult and gambling sites, they must be paid to be included. And yet I have to delete all those idiots who submit adult sites and gambling sites without paying. Or even worse, submit adult and gambling sites to the wrong category. And then those damn sites that are all alike, yet have a different domain name....eg: seems all the so-called real estate sites are the same, even sometimes down to the phone numbers on the site. I enjoy just deleting sites that just are not submitted correctly, are spam sites, are affilaite sites, etc.
i also own a directory and a lot of noobs with autosubmitters always put their description at the url field and their url at the keywords , had about 20 of them this week
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to PortProphecy again. Nice post - it's amazing to see what gets submitted and deleted. It's even worse in our topic specific directories. Unrelated submissions, spam. I wonder if their clients are aware?
Just don't forget that even us legit people want to submit subpages too. So, I submit subpages whenever allowed by a site.
Great read here! (I'm going to submit some sites *all by hand* and we'll see if they get picked as spam )
hey it happens to me too (using InFormEnter) and when I am sleepy, I tend to switch the two together.. I just realize it after some time (if it's a phpld, an error usually comes up, but for other directories, I wouldn't know until they tell me that my site is not accepted.. huhuhuh) that I made a mistake. hehehe what about this --> http://www.portprophecy.com/pics/rejected03.jpg
Uh oh! Missed one in my first post. Oh well, I think everyone can see the issues with this one. It practically screams AUTO-SUBMITTED!
Awesome post, as it helps directory owners to be more specific and really works if one want to build quality directory.
Thanks portprophecy to pointing out what kind of submissions dir owners can get sometimes!!! lol! Insta-delete < will use it all the time.
THe biggest offender to me is every guideline has been violated. Was it an auto or a moron? The joys of running a directory.
It does not have to be one or the other. After all, if you use an auto-submitter, you are, in fact, a moron!