Splut.com

The UKs biggest independent directory?

[IanTurner]

In terms of referrals Splut is now on a par with some significantly mor well known brands. For some sites I am seeing more referrals from Splut than from Lycos or Altavista, even with good results on these engines.
And certainly more than the well known brands such as Excite, HotBot, IXQuick and Search.com

So what makes Splut work where others don't.

The design is clean and reasonably advert free.
The site is quick and search results are quick.
The SERPS are clean.

Is this all it takes?

[peewhy]

It certainly has got all you have listed, I'm not fortunate to share your success with it - but may be in the fullness of time I will see results.

It looks like it draws from dmoz when it can't find a result from within its own db.

You are right, it's got a lot going for it.

[tigger]

is splut taking sites again?

[peewhy]

It has a 'submit url' facility.

[Dayo_UK]

I have to admit that I too have not seen any success with sites listed on splut.

Submitting sites to Splut is not a very succesfull process in my experience - always tend to get a message to say that you are not allowed your company name in the title - or something like that.

New sites area looks a bit sparse too - especially as it says last 100 added.

[IanTurner]

I have successfully submitted a fair number of sites over the last couple of months and have put it on the list of worth submitting to directories.

[tigger]

>It has a 'submit url' facility

I know that! but it has had problems in the past and is pulling an error now

Edit. if you go to .co.uk you get an error but .com is fine very odd :)

[Dayo_UK]

Tigger,

Just submitted one today, just now - and the submission service is working. I submitted one end of last week too - so seems to be OK from my end.

Re my Title comment above - looking at the submission form and already listed sites, it looks like you should keep your title to a minimum.

<edit> Re Tigger edit - yes I was using .com </edit>

[peewhy]

Tigger, >>>It has a 'submit url' facility

Sorry, yes the facility is working and accepting URL's in .com but not in .co.uk.

:)
Peter

[cornwall]

>>So what makes Splut work where others don't.<<

Having looked at Splut, I thought that the relevance of the serps was dreadful

Then I clicked on a few...its all affiliate.espotting at the top of the serps :-((

[peewhy]

It may be owned by espotting. After a submission has been accepted you get this message " CLICK HERE to promote your site to over 70% of the UK Internet Population"

Which takes you to espotting.

[cornwall]

Hey ho...having dug a bit further have a look here [splut.com] you can see how to "improve" your listing in 3 easy steps :-))

[peewhy]

Oh no! I'm totally disillusioned. I thought it was a caring sharing banner free peoples search engine. Doh!

[ncw164x]

It's not owned by espotting, it is an affiliate site showing espotting sponsored search results mixed with their own directory listings

[cornwall]

Splut site tends to be a bit shy on proper contact information.

Looking up Whois leads to a company with a PO Box Number in
Bletchley, Milton Keynes.

You can get quite a lot on it if you look up that company name in Google.

Although that company is the registrant and owner of splut.com , they do not claim to be Splut. I found

"One of our clients, Splut.com is a pay per click search engine (listing is free but you can bid to be top of category) and we handle a lot of the submissions and rejections for them."

Make what you will out of that lot!

On a practical basis, I get vitually no referrals from them across my sites - probably because I don't either pay them or put their banner on!

[peewhy]

I'm certainly listed with them but that's via dmoz, as I said previously I've yet to see results from them either...probably for the same reasons has cornwall.

[cornwall]

...and as WebmasterWorld is the fount of all knowledge ;) try this from WebmasterWorld Wayback machine

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Robber]

Splut has always been on my list of places where you can pick up a link off an html page that will be crawled by Google - haven't seen much direct traffic, but then the sites usually end up quite deep in the site.

As far as I'm concerned it serves its purpose by giving a link.

[peewhy]

At the end of it all I suppose we all have options.

Splut may not be the greatest, biggest nor best but it works and we can submit to it free of charge. Should we wish to take up their offer of investing into a preferential indexing systems, it is our choice to do so.

[TinkyWinky]

Fully agree with Robber - seems the only useful service (I have three sites listed in very good positions - with 6 clickthroughs in two years) is for a link.... but then a link is a link so don't look a gift horse in the mouth etc etc etc...

TW :)

[albroun]

where did they get that awful name from?!

I feel embarassed telling my clients that I am submitting their site to SPLUT. Sounds like some dodgy porn site.

Are they actually the biggest UK-specific web directory?

[lukey]

Not worth much as far as a back link is concerned in my book. All the links run through a cgi bin, and therefore have never appeared to be indexed from where I'm sitting.

The only page with straight links is the referrals page - which is basically a popularity link exchange, and I don't think it's worth damaging the reputation of my sites in return for a PR5 slit between so many sites.

[Robber]

I'd agree that the PR benefit is small but I dont see the link going through cgi script (I think thats only if you do a search rather than browse) and since the PR formula is additive we might as well take what little benefit we can if its free.