zeal.com any good?

zeal.com seems to be a popular directory. but my audience is not from the USA. should I enter it for link benefit or is it worth the effort?

 

Not worth it, nobody uses it, and you need to go through all kind of weird tests to be an editor and be able to submit your site.

 

yeah I took that fricking test and it was very annoying.. Did eventually pass it.. but not worth all the hoops in my opinion.

They will not add sites to categories and apparently ignore all requests to create new sub-categories so you can't add sites that are not covered by a specific sub-category..

I think passing the test makes me an editor but I am not really sure...

 

zeal sucks

 

I also find it very rigid to work with even thou I just about got the top score on their test.

 

thanks for the advice. i turned down the cult.

-
Mediterranean Villas in Turkey

 

It dont cost you anything, why not giving it a try

 

david, have you tried adding your site? questions, quizzes, approvals... it's easier join the CIA.

--
turkeyrenting.com

 

weid process and a huge waste of time

 

I spent two whole nights, to finish the first two tests.

Two whole nights = 10 hours x 2 = 20 hours, non-stop.

After that ... for eight months, i tried to submit one of my websites (a completly and absolutetly free one, so no commercial services) and had no luck.

Been rejected 3 times.

You can't find ANY free category at all (realisticly speaking) for your niche.

If you find a free one, with relativly the same niche, than you will be rejected, because you do not have the right niche for that category.

And speaking more, you have a single link (no anchor, and only the URL is direct), in a NON-mod_rewrite category, which may or may not be indexed in google.

Most categories have PR 0. This one for example, has been in the directory for a very long time (years) :

http://www.zeal.com/category/preview.jhtml?cid=10011586

And still PR 0 .

So benefits ? Really , in my opinion :

To pride yourself that you are there, whenever you can. Anything else ? No. (i repeat, in my opinion)

 

Aha! Another opportunity. Maybe, I should offer a ZEAL SUBMISSION SERVICE You give me the category and content and I submit for you (I am a ZEALOT - I passed that benchmark)

 

Whew...glad it wasn't just me. I tried to submit to Zeal late one night and finally just gave up on it. That's way too much work for just one backlink, IMO.

 

zeal.com was good when msn was using it for their serps but now it's useless

 

Agree with this thread... Zeal is a waste of time. I was a sucker and spent the time going through their assinine tests. I passed and then submitted two sites. Both of them were rejected because they were "commercial" sites (meaning I had some adsense ads on the sites). However, when you looked at the sites that had been approved in the past, several of them had their own ads on them.

Don't waste your time.

 

expertu
Did you get any traffic from zeal.com at least?

 

About 1-2 reffers per month.

But this is just my case

 

even if your audience is from the US, you're still wasting your time

 

Thank you from saving me all that time and hassle.

 

I passed the test, added my site, and I was rejected

I was too comercial so they suggested a submission to another site ( I can't remember the name now).

To be honest I regret waisting the time to do that test

 

That is one of the most painful things about ZEAL. They find everything commercial. Even having AdSense on a content site makes it commercial