Hi, I recently bought a new directory. It's just one month old. I have not maintained a directory before. I am getting some natural submission to my directory. I went through some popular directories and read their Guidelines. I have doubts over 2 guidelines. "We don't approve Gambling and Pharmacy websites" The problem I have is the category. My directory has a category called "Gambling" and I am getting many submission of gambling related websites for that category. Can I approve them is it considered illegal to approve Gambling sites in a web directory? If it's illegal should remove the "Gambling Category" and stop getting submissions for Gambling related sites? I am also getting many submissions regarding Pharmacy related websites to categories like, Health and Medicine. Is it illegal to approve online pharmacy sites? I have submitted some pharmacy sites before to directories. Some get approved and some declined. So I am not sure whether to approve Gambling and Pharmacy sites and this is my first directory. Please guide me with these guidelines for approval..
Hi, Welcome to the directory industry, always nice to see new people coming in. To answer your questions, it is not illegal to list either Gambling or Pharmacy web sites. However there are some things you need to take into consideration: - If you are running a paid directory, PayPal does not like it if you accept payments for listing Gambling related web sites. This is because of the new US laws against gambling. If you are running a free directory then it is entirely your choice whether or not you wish to list such web sites. There are a few loopholes that allow you to bypass the PayPal problem, the most popular being to edit the payment information so that the URL of the web site is not sent to PayPal, thus they never know that the payment relates to gambling. - Pharmacy links are a gray area because of all the spam which the search engines deal with related to, viagra, cialis, etc. So a page which contains links to sites in bad neighborhoods may well receive some form of penalty. This is why many directories avoid listing such sites. HTH
Thanks a lot SilkySmooth for that great explanation. I have a new directory and have some pharmacy/viagara sites listed. Maybe I should get rid of them before I get penalized by Google.
Thanks very much Silkysmooth for the great tips and clarifications. I am taking no more risk with either paypal or google. I will remove those categories and also the links. Thanks again.
Good answer, paypal are not the be all and end all of payment processors, you can use others to accept the gambling and medicine sites to work aroud this. Use an alternative payment processor like we do. That way you don't risk getting caught by manipulating anything. Just a thought.
hi all, nice to hear it but a gen unity is what is also considered so before link exchange or submission check for authentication of site and then proceed further!
One thing no one has mentioned is that it is your directory now and for the most part you are the sheriff in town - you make the rules. When it comes to gambling, pharmacy, MFA, and affiliate sites; it's up to you to include or not. You can decide that you don't like pink sites and not accept any using that color. (OK, a bit extreme, but hopefully makes the point.) Do add a Terms of Service (TOS) page if you do not already have one. Spell out which sites you will accept and which you will not. If you plan to charge for links discuss your refund policy if a site is declined. And always, always, always include "These policies are subject to change at any time." If any of the pharmacy and gambling sites that you will be deleting paid for premium placement, you should probably refund all or part of their payment.