I have a hack that sorts the sites dependant on if they followed the submission rules or not...This means that submissions which follow the guidelines 100% may be approved in a matter of hours while those which are still valuable sites but have issues with grammar or format may wait a week or more If someone doesn't have the time to read the guidelines, they can wait for their review
I can say I'm new and it's take 24 - 48 hour at the moment. But if everyday comes 100 sites than it's possible that it take more time. Mike
With free directories, the time can be longer as your backlog grows larger. But most of my directories are paid model, so I usually approve rather quickly. If I'm online at the time, in a matter of minutes.
To be frankly saying, As i have 17 Directories, i have very less time to be reviewing and approving the sites. Each site gets about 150 submissions per day. Who can have time to approve ~ 2500 sites So it would be late for me to approve the listings.
It's taken a little bit longer for my directory as of late. For some reason I have been absolutely swamped with submissions. I'd say up to a week for review. It's free, so I see no problem with the wait. However, if it's paid then it is almost immediate, as I'm notified via email and I take care of the paying customer.
I would have to agree that you should be wiling to be patient for the waiting time on free submissions. One of the biggest problems is filtering out all the crap submissions that are clogging up the que....lately it seems I have been rejecting 9 of 10 submissions, mostly MFA sites.
There shouldn't be any wait. But if submissions are of low quality or relevance, it should be banned and banned forever (not just deleted) upon review. That cuts down all spammers, affiliates, made for adsense re-submissions while building a directory full of quality sites. 40% of all submissions have been banned so far.