1) Change your submit.php to another file name - most of the automated softwares will fail. 2) On "Submit Page" add a heading "fishing sites only" 3) Add image verification 4) Add a splash page and delay time for submit page to load, spammer don't like that much.
Hmm, thanks for the great advice on this topic everyone - I will take some of your ideas into hand here
Hello... Great Fishing Site... I submitted some Pet links , hope for fast approval... Make it $1.00 if its free and you will eliminate 75% of garbage submissions (at least thats what i did in my Pet Directory) thx malcolm
You can expect this problem to get worse as your directory gets more popular if you don't adopt enough countermeasures. And whilst some good suggestions have been made so far not one of them on its own will cut out all of the spam. What you need to do is adopt as many techniques as you can, with the help of a good script. Ban IP addresses, emails, domains, and various keywords. You could spider the submitted page and check that it contains keywords relevant to the category it's submitted in. Increase your requirements for the number of words in the description. Add a text captcha (image-based captchas are too annoying, you don't want to add those). There are a lot of different approaches you can take to filtering out junk submissions, and each step you take will eliminate a certain % of them.
How can I make it $1.00 if it will be free, please expand on that... PS did not see your links - fishing related links will only be accepted.
I have an arts-related directory and our submission guidelines state very clearly that we only accept sites closely related to our topic. Yet, most of our submissions are unrelated. We have image verification. And, sites must be submitted from a category. And I delete unrelated sites & ban the domain names. In the case of someone who submits multiple off-topic sites I ban the IP. And still the problem continues. I don't want to stop offering a free submission option so don't really think there's anything else to do. Just hang in there. It's easier if your directory software offers a mass deletion setting - just tick each offender & click "remove." Good luck! cheers ~ Denise
You could add script that checks the site submission out. i.e. scraps the site that they submitted and looks for keywords like fish, fishing, etc. Sites only get submitted for review once they pass your script.