Editorial Reviews - Nothing but Hype?

Do you hide behind the term "editorial review" to justify accepting payment for links on your site or do you actually review submissions?

Do you adhere to any guidelines? Are these guidelines published on your directory?

What do you review? The submitted title and description, or the actual web site?

Do you actually look past the homepage? Do you review multiple pages from the site?

Do you check for unique content? Or do you accept sites with regurgitated content? Do you watch for redirects or framed content?

What about sites that "trap" users - such as those that disable the back button? Or utilize excessive pop-ups?

Do you check for broken images and navigation?

Do you ignore AdSense or other advertising program policy violations?

Do you ignore attempts to game search engines such as hidden text? Hidden links?

Do ignore thin affiliate sites and lead generators?

After reviewing the site, do you create a title and description that is of benefit to your directory? One that acurately describes the site and its content? Or use one designed only to manipulate search engine rankings?

 

Yes, remembering to switch your hosts file, ad-blocking, pop-up blocking etc. is the first thing to do and is easy to overlook.

Then I like to have a good browse around the site, making sure all the main links work and pages are constructed.

Often blogs with few posts will not display archives so it's a case of hitting the back button to find the first post.

Duplicated content stands out like a sore thumb. A site which has obviously been made by somebody who's first language is not English will have a well written and grammatically correct post - that goes into Google to find if it's original.

As well as editing the title and description don't forget to check it's been submitted to the most relevant category, if not move it or create a category for it.

But of course all that's a lot of trouble, why bother?

Get your users to edit the listings for you.

 

CReed- I wonder why you are not getting many replies to this thread? LOL

I will break the silence and admit that compaired to your list of good review points, my standards seem week.

Let me suggest that we discuss this important topic not as a matter of ethics, but as a matter of business model.

My goal is to provide is to provide a legal product or service, at a fair price, and be able to pay my bills as a result.

A case can be made that I would provide more value to my customers with a tighter review policies, but, would I have any customers?

Take www.dirmaina.org. I charge $10 for a review. I could not afford to charge that price if I took the time to review according to your list. I may have to refund half of my revenue for sites that did not meet that standard.

It certainly may be the case that the directory would then command a higher review price and it might attract high quality, high volume customers.

I do not have the answer but I just wanted to frame this as a business model choice.

 

Editorial reviews did exist some years back but does not anymore. Today the directory industry is ready to accept just about anything!

I am myself into a project which should bring about a lot of revolution in the directory industry. Again, we are facing a lot of technical problems. Our market research team has brought a lot of changes hence I plan to delay my project further about 4-6months.

Why I am talking about my project is that we have editorial integrity as our Top-Priority in the project. We has as for now decided to set rules of 'no-refund' policy.

Editorial Reviews can only work when you have the 'no-refund' policy implemented according to me.

People fear changing a submission as they fear buyer asking a refund, but then when the fee is non-refundable I see a bright future there wrt Editorial Integrity.

 

I'm also disappointed there's so few repies to a good opening post. Many have complained about the spam on this forum distracting from the purpose of it. Yet here we have a good relevant post and nobody replies.

As for not refunding reviews, it doesn't work for small directories. Last two days I've had 3 submissions and rejected/refunded two of them.

 

One of the major step which makes a directory 'big' is to start charging for 'Review Fee'. Editor does need to get paid.

 

Creed...very valid points you make and I have to admit from what I have seen in so many directories, that owners do NOT review.
Just approve and approve and approve.
Heck look at so many directories here that promote themselves as being automatic approval, 100% approval, etc.

Those are to be avoided obviously.

Now, I do review sites submitted to my directories.
I probably reject for so many reasons 8 out of 10 submitted.

First I look at title, url and description.
They do not fit my guidelines, I delete.
Then I go to the site if they pass the first test.

It is work, but it keeps the riff raff down to almost 0%.

 

Wonder how many realize this?

 

Well, when I see directories that show thousands of sites pending, I know that owner did not realize the work involved.
Or the owner is too damn lazy to do the work involved.

What is a joy to me is to have webmasters ask why their site was not accepted.
My stock answer is:
I reviewed and rejected.
End of story!

 

I'll have to admit that I don't follow all those that you have pointed out, some of those never even occurred to me so thanks for the pointers. But I do check a few pages in the site and watch out for redirects, most of the time I do find myself changing the description, some people just aren't very good at writing them. I might be busy doing other things but I still always take the time to make sure that I only list websites that have good quality and provide some value for other viewers.

Very nice guidelines, great for those who are new to the directory market.

 

Hello...

Actually i havent replied in this thread sooner due to the fact that Creed already pointed
out most if not all the main things to look for when reviewing sites.

I think that reviewing the adult directories has actually taught myself every possible trick
known to man as adult webmasters have to be extremely sneaky to get quality links to there
sites and there niche is so saturated that they are well advanced at the trickery & black hatting
compared to the regular joe webmaster...

(NOTE: when i do catch them trying to pull a fast one... instant delete and ban, if not they WILL try again)


thx
M1

 

Do you hide behind the term "editorial review" to justify accepting payment for links on your site or do you actually review submissions?

Both should be reviewed in the same manner.

Do you adhere to any guidelines? Are these guidelines published on your directory?

A clear detailed guide which no one follow

What do you review? The submitted title and description, or the actual web site?
1. URL (Redirected, Deep links)
2. Title (If it match the domain name or not)
3. Description (If its unique or not)
4. Website main pages and content.
5. Design.
6. Advertising and ad sense if its spammed all over the site or its in a normal manner.
7. Quality
8. Search engine optimization of the web site.
10. Illegal, casino, adult content if it exist in the website or not.


Do you actually look past the homepage? Do you review multiple pages from the site?
Main pages usually.

Do you check for unique content? Or do you accept sites with regurgitated content? Do you watch for redirects or framed content?
Unique content is hard to check, redirected and link farm sites are rejected instantly.

What about sites that "trap" users - such as those that disable the back button? Or utilize excessive pop-ups?
Instantly rejected.

Do you check for broken images and navigation?
Quick look at the design if its unique and user friendly.


Do you ignore AdSense or other advertising program policy violations?
Violated or tricky adsense are rejected instantly.

Do you ignore attempts to game search engines such as hidden text? Hidden links?
Rejected Instantly

Do ignore thin affiliate sites and lead generators?
Not allowed in my directory.

After reviewing the site, do you create a title and description that is of benefit to your directory? One that acurately describes the site and its content? Or use one designed only to manipulate search engine rankings?
Everything should be modified by me before it get listed

 

Thanks for all of the replies and participation.

There are other factors I consider when looking at different types of sites - for example if a site is ecommerce enabled I like to see a published privacy policy, contact information beyond an email address, encrypted transaction pages and no counterfeit replicas.

I know there are other factors to consider beyond what I've already shared, I'm sure some others can add what they might consider to be important to them.

Anything else some one should consider besides the PayPal payment confirmation email?

It's not about how strict some one might/might not be, it's nice to see that some do care enough about their index and their users experience that they actually evaluate a submission prior to accepting it.

 

In addition to this I have a long list of spam words which result in the submission going to the possible spam queue which can be quickly previewed to find the occasional good one.

I also do a quick site review for those sites remaining. This has cut my daily work from 5 or so hours to around 1.5 hours.

I typically accept around 10% of submissions.

 

If you make the sentences declarative instead of interrogatory format (*)... that opening post makes a very nice "How-To" for editing a submission correctly.





* unless you're a contestant on "Jeopardy", in which case phrasing each statement as a question is standard procedure

 

I always ensure that the sites listed in the directories are good and quality ones. Recently added some well-known sites into the directory to boost its quality listings.