No, only quality sites. I only approve around 5% of sites suggested to my directory. I really wish I could approve more of them.
My take on this is that if your directory is new, you will accept most of the submissions. However once the directory matures and you have more quality listings, you can get picky about who you let in.
i disagree with this, just cos my directory was new didnt mean i let everyone in i would rather have a small directory filled with 500 decent sites then a medium directory with 500 decent sites and 500 spammy sites
As it is very easy to promote a directory, the best is to keep it clean with quallity links from the start, because when it grows it is very difficult to change this.
Me too - the ones that are just news feeds or a list of articles from article databases to support AdSense - deleted! Exactly my experience. My directory software is set to email me when there is a new submission (because a submission requires manual approval) and I'd say that at least three quarters of sites submitted have nothing to do with my niche - delete!
Great topic, Here's what I don't accept. 1. If a site is missing a field, like the description I delete immediately. 2. Adsense/YPN only sites. 3. Those one page, sales letter sites. 4. Sites with no content. 5. "Adult" sites. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just run family directories 6. Sites that are Amazon links to a particular product. What really irritates me is when someone chooses the top level parent category, when there is a subcategory that is an exact match of their site. I recategorize them now, but I don't know for how much longer I will keep doing that.
More and more, I learn something here in the forum. This thread is helping me quite a bit. Now I will actually visit the sites submitted to my directories. Then if the site is a spammy site, built only for adsense, or not what the description says, will delete it. Good points from a few of you on what to delete and I thank you for that.
Anyone who doesn't want to end up with a link farm instead of a real directory should always do this - you'd be amazed at what people will type in hoping the directory owner will NOT go and look at the site - anything for a backlink
What bugs me the most is when someone doesn't bother to use proper capitalization. Drives me crazy! Or uses commas, etc in the title tag, or excessive use of commas in the description. Or a string of keywords for the title tag, not a descriptive string of keywords. Not everyone is a web designer: myself included, so I don't reject a listing because someone can't design a page. Nor can everyone write a title or description - this used to be the hardest thing for me - still is, if I think the page is quality, I'll modify the listing. I'll add a category if I need to. The only time I don't look at a site (and I tend to look at several things of the site when I browse) is if I've been to that site, or most directories because I've submitted sites to them. I myself always try to read submission guidelines, and I wish more people would learn to do so.
On my main directory the category where adult sites were placed. Just got rid of it...so now family friendly, work friendly, just pure friendly.
Change I have made now is not to accept any interior urls. Has to be main site or not accepted. Biggest reason for this change was that someone with a site that had like a dozen or more interior pages submitted each one. Same with sub-domains. No longer accepted for the same reason above. Why people want to submit a site that is http://www.xxxxxxx .com/1stpage and so forth to /24thpage is beyond me. And another that came across several times today were twin submissions for the same site. EG... http://xxxxx. com and http://www.xxxxx. com
what i do is only now let 1 submission per domain (unless they pay for featured) and if they wanna submit an interior url as there 1 submission then so be it
That's pretty much how I feel in general about the issue too - they know the site - let the site owner decide which page. Occasionally, I'll alter it to the main page if it doesn't "feel right" for some reason.
Spammy type sites should never be accepted. We select sites based on their content and interest to our readers. we don't accept: Pure affiliate site. Poor page design. Not enough unique content
Unless of course you are running www.scams-r-us.com or www.we-list-crap.com in which case the rule would be that non-spammy sites should never be accepted. Hmmm... sort of like DMOZ Adult.
As far as accepting submissions goes, I would definitely not accept EVERYTHING submitted to me. You would be overrun with spam sites, pill sites, porn sites, made-for-adsense sites, etc. Accepting all this junk would make your directory rather useless to the general public. (The spammers would love you though!!!)
We reject around 95% of submissions to our directory, unfortunetly (Our directories are all fit a niche). We would love to accept more, but in a fairly specialised niche it is hard to get good quality manual submissions. We too get alot of spammy purpose built adsense sites, along with sites that do not fit our niche, or even people (maybe who don't have their own website) submitting seemingly completely random sites not related to their companies??
I reject without visiting: sites that don't fit the niche, submissions with poor grammar and spelling, very short descriptions, and subdomains or subdirectories. Also, anything I just know is going to be spammy will get canned. I don't even see any of the submissions that hit my automatic filters. When I visit, I'll also reject sites with too little content, no original content, content taken from articles sites, or nothing useful to contribute. I do also reject on aesthetic grounds, or if the site has accessibility issues, but only when there is something else wrong and it's not a truly unique resource.