Forum Moderators: open
Thanks,
Clueless
Of course, I don't know how many WebmasterWorld members have sites that qualify for their listing rules, as most of us focus on highly commercial sites, but i'm sure there's also a lot of us with informational sites/pages as well, but i hope they don't get bombarded with bad submissions!
here are some of their 'rules' & background:
1. Policy regarding commercial/non-commercial sites:
We have listings for both types of sites on our pages. While we have many more non-commercial sites, we do occasionally list commercial sites as well if we feel their information value is high. In other words, all sites we list must have an educational component that we feel is valuable independent of a site’s commercial goals.
2. Guidelines for listing:
All sites we list have been selected and credentialed by the IPL. Each collection or section has its own scope policy and guidelines, but we also have some general guidelines for the entire collection. Sites should:
- be from known authorities or reputable institutions
- have a consistent and appropriate reading level
- be up-to-date and list dates for their most recent update
- be easy to navigate
- describe their policies and history
- have a FAQ section or make efforts to answer questions about the site
- take responsibility for the content by including contact information
These are general guidelines, and occasionally we will list a site that does not meet a qualification if we feel that the information is particularly valuable or difficult to get elsewhere.
3. How many submissions do we get and how many are added:
Here is what I can tell you. The IPL is a student-driven education project. The majority of our collections are created and maintained by students as part of a graduate-level class offered at the University of Michigan School of Information. As such, major site additions are done at irregular intervals. There is also a very small core staff and group of volunteers who do some regular additions and maintenance of the collections. We get many site suggestions from our patrons, between 50 and 100 a month. Because we must investigate them all individually, a very small number are added regularly.
4. Total listings:
The IPL has about 40,000 links in our collections and about 22,000 links to sites with electronic texts in our text section.
5. Number of users that search IPL:
Our site receives about 12 million hits a month, which translates to roughly 1.5-2 million individual users.
6. Institutions that use the data for research:
the students and faculty at the University of Michigan School of Information use the IPL as a training tool and to study online collections and virtual reference. We also know that we are linked to by over 14,000 sites.
also, vlib.org is another basic one run by volunteers, nothing pretty, but good PR if you're into that sort of thing, and some useful categories of information.
Here's a good thread with a useful list from member 'fathom' included.
[webmasterworld.com...]
2odd...
directory-search.org
Looks empty at the moment, so unlikely they have any editors actively adding sites.
Couldn't find an add-URL either, so they may have given up.
TJ
Thanks again,
Clueless
As far as the ones that want a fee for review, is there any kind of benchmark that people use for deciding whether the chance in a directory is worth the fee? I don't have a good sense of how to evaluate it.
Start by reading their TOS, then have a look at existing listings. From there it's common sense really.
TJ
Oh, btw, if you drill down in directory-search.org
to a specific area, the add-url link shows up and seems to be functioning.
Thanks,
Clueless
jd
business.com ($99 a year, cheaper than yahoo)
bocat.com (B2B - Free)
JoeAnt.com ($39.95 one time fee)
webworldindex.com (Free)
1st-spot.com ($10 fee one time)
Even though these have fees, it's worth it to me because google crawls them, helps page rank and even traffic.
Good luck - jd
A very helpful list, some I haven't seen before, but some dont have hard html links, but instead redirect scripting links, which I question if search engine spiders like Google follow. Some great leads though, thanks.
[edited by: tedster at 10:54 pm (utc) on Feb. 14, 2004]
usastar.com Free
epanorama.net Free
somuch.com Free
Arielis.com 10.00
mysearch7.com Free
Linkopedia 9.95
jd
Just highlighting the submission procedure. The others were good though Johnny, cheers ;)
...tip toe out
jd
Powdork - it may be worth a listing, but not a page rank. Look in google's cache for the site on any page that you can add a link. The way it's setup it will never be crawled by google. See the same thing?
You should read directory-search.org texts:
If you submit to a specific location (for instance, Chicago) your site will be shown also in more general ones (Illinois, United States, North America and "World")
So you submit your site to a specific location, but it will appear also in general locations (indexed and with PR). If you submit to Chicago ˇyou get 5 links!
Anyway all the categories within directory-search will be indexed as they use short querystrings, and they are getting a lot of PR through their free script (I've seen it on several pages, and I bet the directory will increase its PR next update).
