Thoughts on SPAM entries in directories....

Recently, as my directory begins to grow, I have started to get questionable sites being submitted for review, many I have to reject, others I accept where it is borderline.

The difficulty is ascertaining which are acceptable, and which are not. Obviously I don't want to include SPAM or fraudulent sites - but how does one tell? It is very hard, just looking at a website, say for example an online Pharmacy, to know whether they engage in SPAM.

I would be interested to hear from other directory editors in terms of how they deal with this dilemma.

There simply isn't time when you are approving sites to research a submission to perhaps the level that would like to. Do other editors just go on gut instinct, or do you use other tools to determine whether to include a site?

 

All your questions and concerns depend a great deal on what you are trying to acieve with your directory.

 

Good point. Well, the aim is to build a clean directory with a good ranking - so the people who submit their sites get something out of it.

I guess I don't want bad links to spoil it for others by becoming the next Bluefind.

You would think that if you linked to a spam website, Google might notice. That is the concern.

 

Wait till you start getting hundreds of submissions a day. That's why human review is extremely time consuming. Also it is impossible to keep the directory 100% clean.
I know many spammers create nice, clean sites, submit them to all directories, and change the site's content. How can you track that? no way.
your directory looks awesome, and thanks for the fast approval time for my sites.
good luck
p.s. eventually your directory will grow, grow, and grow, and you'll stop accepting free submissions it's the way.

 

I'm having the same thing with my new directory.
There are many people submitting 'spam' sites, I intend to keep the directory clean, but also accepting the borderline cases. I've seen sites resubmitted after I rejected those sites.

When I started the site I moved a lot of sites to the correct categories, but now if not submitted to the correct categorie I reject them. At this point I get about 20 new submissions a day and it's growing.

I want to be strict about accepting sites to the directory so it stays clean. I'm not really concerned about a link to a spam site, don't think it really will hurt the site.

 

Things I take into consideration when considering submissions are things like if the site provides a benefit to the end user. Sites which are just full of search engine results pages, lack good content and/or use unethical seo tactics I delete in an instant. You usually dont have to go too far past the home page to figure it out.

 

any site that looks dodgy or contains too many ads are 99% of the time rejected but that is mainly because im aiming at kids & teens dunno if the same rule would reply for a general directory?

 

My biggest problem at the moment is with some joker who is using automated submission software. I know he is, because my add link URL was down for several days, yet he managed to submit several sites. His stuff is easy to spot, as it is all essentialy the same:
Name: JohnDoe
Category: Internet
Website title: The best home page
Description: The homepage of [TITLE]
Keywords: The best homepage
If he cannot be bothered to take a bit more time to submit the sites, I cannot be bothered to review his sites, especially as all the earlier stuff I looked at was garbage, and hit me with a virus.

 

Why don't you add one of those 'write the number from the image' validation checks?

 

I would love to. Trouble is, I know absolutely nothing about programming cgi based scripts. Heck, I'm not sure how to do it at all in any script. I will have to raise the issue with the programmer.

 

I just recently had to implement image verification. They were nailing me with up to 3,000 submissions a day even with the submissions closed.

 

After time you will be able to see most of the spam sites without opening them up as well as the one’s that will most likely pull a bait a switch on you.
We need to get some forums going just for directory owners to help each other out. Spammers run from one directory to the next.

 

Just brainstorming here, so tell me what you think:

How about if we (directory owners) periodically change the url of the add-URL page? or something of that sort, thereby ensuring that only people who visit the submission page can get through?

Ajeet

 

make sure you change the url of the FORM processing script also

 

What I do is similar to image verification, except it is by email. I email them a code and then they have to enter it back into the website.

Has been working well.... for now, at least.

 

I required people to register, which sends a verification email/url. This is all part of the Mambo CMS systems, saves me the trouble!

 

This is not a bad suggestion, if you don't know anything about programming. The problem, of course is that each time you set-up a new web page you lose all the "high rankings" your old page might have for keywords like "submit site", "submit url" et al.

Another solution if you don't know much programming is to set-up "image verification" as suggested by someone else, but just have a static image. Then, point the image's link and edit the submission page manually every day or every other day or whenever you start receiving SPAM. So, all users will get the same image and as soon as you start getting SPAM, change it. A bit cumbersome, but this will work without any programming knowledge.

I also raised these issues when I built my directory. I decided to use email verification to handle this problem. Although it's still a fairly new directory, I haven't had any problems so far.

 

hedir.com now clocking 200 sites submission per day our editors are having a hard time keeping the junk aside. When you have free listing option available then thats what you must learn to live with i guess

 

200+ a day is really good. We are 1/10th that averaging about 20 per day. But we are only 2 months old.

Are you all considering going to a pay-only submission service?

 

In addition to spam, the big pain is people not writing properly and not adding to the appropriate categories.

Also, what do you think of submissions made that multiple subdomain of one domain. Though some seems to be genuine, but there are plenty that are simply spams.