I submitted my latest site, a review site called CEviews.org, to blogcatalog.com after moving some reviews from this site to it. It was rejected with the following email:
Dear Ash Nallawalla,
Thank you for submitting your blog CEviews (http://www.ceviews.org) to BlogCatalog.
Unfortunately upon reviewing your blog we are unable to grant it access to the directory.
The most common reasons for not getting into Blog Catalog are:
- We could not verify ownership of your blog.
- A link back, widget or meta-tag is required to verify site ownership. visit: http://www.blogcatalog.com/buttons for more information.
- The URL you submitted is not a blog.
- The URL you submitted is solely for commercial purposes, or is suspected to be spam.
- Your blog is brand new and/or doesn’t have enough content to make it truly valuable.
- If this is the case, please resubmit after you have made more postings.
- Your blog contains pornographic material.
- At the time of review your blog was unavailable or there was a typo in your submission URL.
Please make sure the URL submitted is correct and accessible.
If you believe this to be a mistake, you can login to Blog Catalog ( http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/manage_blog.html ) and change anything which may have caused it to get declined. After updating your blog, it will be put back into the submission queue.
If you have any questions/comments/suggestions/ideas please feel free to contact us.
Thanks,
BlogCatalog
BlogCatalog.com • 7162 Eckhert Road • San Antonio • TX • 78238
CEviews isn’t commercial, isn’t spam, did have a blogcatalog tag and doesn’t fall into any of the other elimination criteria that blogcatalog’s robot editors can’t be bothered to single out.
After removing Net Magellan from this directory, I decided to see what kind of sites are “acceptable”. You be the judge.
Here is the category where CEviews should have found a home: Technology Reviews.
http://www.blogcatalog.com/explore/technology/
Here are some of the sites that were accepted by blogcatalog:
And this bunch of “quality” sites:
- http://www.techdaring.com/2010/08/12/toshiba-announces-self-deleting-hard-drive-technology/
- http://techinfo.co.in/wordpress/toshiba-announces-self-deleting-hard-drive-technology
- http://expressgiant.blogspot.com/2010/08/toshiba-announces-wipe-technology-for.html
- http://laptopmix.com/2010/08/toshiba-wipe-technology-erases-hard-drive-remotely/
Blogcatalog has come a long way since the time this blog graced its presence. I didn’t explore it, other than to see who had invited me to be their “friend”. Yahoo shows over 13 million URLs in it. I am sorry that CEviews isn’t a splog, full of mixmastered words, but I think I understand the acceptance criteria better.
If you have a decent blog there, think twice whether you want to be part of that neighbourhood.
Ash,
Methinks the service which is complaining about yours being a commercial site or some other diabolical scheme might be ‘manned’ by none humans. 👿 😈
Maybe they challenge all and just accept those who try again, that might explain the ahem! ‘quality’ of those they do let in!!
Asleep at the wheel might be a good description heh.
nils illegitumus carborundum 😆
Laine
http://www.ThoughtsfromABroad.net
Yes, with millions of splogs being accepted, asleep at the wheel is probably the case.
Unfortunately, I’ve become pretty jaded on any of the blog directories, groups, whatever because I’ve found that most user actions have more benefit for the services owners than those submitting blogs. Really, is Technorati or Stumble really worth all the time and effort it takes to get any real exposure or traffic? Enough time is spent on the actual blog and solid promotion basics without having to commit hours to a directory.
Paul, you have made me pause and think. Thank you. Yes, I should revisit Technorati in particular and see what link-goodness it still gives, if any. I use StumbleUpon to look for trends, so it’s OK for now.
I have had not just one, but two experiences like yours from Blog Catalog.
Last week I submitted my blog (all unique posts BTW) for entry into their directory. My request was denied and I received the same exact rejection e-mail they sent you. No reason for rejection was given except that same litany of possible reasons.
This morning I received a notification from BC that a blog they approved and listed over 2 years ago (but I have since abandoned) was removed from the directory. Again, no specific reason was given. They only gave the same list of possibles.
As of this morning, I have deleted my BC account and want nothing more to do with that directory. As Google presses on with its Panda and Penguin updates, I imagine BC will be rejecting and removing a lot of of other high-quality blogs for no reason. If they can’t be bothered to hire human editors, they should at least give bloggers an exact reason why they were rejected and what can be done to fix the problem. However, in the end I’m not so sure that BC is even worth the worry….