Dealing with Spam in Brilliant Directory Sites

What Is Spam?

Directory sites are online platforms that allow businesses to list their information and services for users to browse and search through. These sites can be very useful for consumers, as they provide a central location for finding businesses in a particular industry or location. However, like many other online platforms, directory sites are also vulnerable to spam.

Spam in directory sites can take three main forms. Firstly, spammers may create fake listings in order to gain more visibility to manipulate search results for the purposes of fraud, theft of malware spreading. Secondly, spammers may use the lead functionality to contact listing owners automatically for any number of reasons, but usually to sell goods or services which are not relevant or of value to the listing owners.  Thirdly, spammers may use the Contact Us functionality to spam you, the site owner, with irrelevant or harmful information.

All of these types of spam can be harmful to the site owner, listing owners and visitors to the site.  Spam can dilute the value of the directory site for legitimate businesses and poor quality or spammy leads.  This is particularly an issue as in our experience, paying subscribers will often cancel their subscription if they are receiving spammy leads from the directory site.

How To Deal with Spam

So, what can be done about spam in directory sites? There are a few different approaches that can help to reduce spam and improve the overall quality of the site.

First and foremost, directory sites should have strong moderation and review processes in place. This can involve manually reviewing all new listings, as well as regularly checking existing listings for accuracy and relevance. Sites should also have clear guidelines for what is and is not allowed, and enforce these guidelines consistently.

There are some technology approaches that Brilliant Directories provides to help reduce spam such as Keyword Blocking, Honeypot and CAPTCHA using the spam form protector free plugin.  You can read about these from the following documentation: https://bootstrap.brilliantdirectories.com/support/solutions/articles/12000046616-spam-form-protector-add-on 

When using lead automatching (which is a must for anything but the smallest of lead-gen sites), this free plugin still allows through spammy and poor quality leads and further plugins are needed to help reduce the administrative burden of manually approving each and every lead.  We suggest two approaches to help: blocking access to lead and contact forms from certain countries and locations and automatically validating leads by making visitors validate their phone number or email when then fill out the lead or contact forms.

Blocking website forms is a simple approach when spam leads or contacts are coming from some specific countries (such as China or Russia) or where you want to make sure that only people within the area you are serving can access your forms.  Our Country Form Blocker plugin can be used to control exactly which locations can or cannot access lead and contact forms.

More powerful is our Lead Validator Plugin which ensures that visitors have a valid mobile phone number when filling out the lead form.  When the visitor fills out the lead form, an SMS is sent to their phone which they must enter correctly before the lead can be submitted.

Conclusion

In conclusion, spam in directory sites is a problem that can have serious consequences for both the site and its users. By taking steps to prevent and mitigate spam, directory sites can improve the overall quality and usefulness of their platforms, and ensure that they remain a valuable resource for consumers.  Our two plugins can be used to augment the free plugins from Brilliant Directories and help take your directory to the next level.  

If you have any questions about our plugins or would like to discuss a multi-plugin discount, please contact us directly.