I don't often handle many manual directory submission campaigns myself since my time can be monetized better in other areas. But this morning I thought I would get my hands dirty and submit a client's web site to Yahoo Directory and Microsoft's Submit It! (sbd.bcentral.com), among a few other like Best of the Web, (BOTW.org), Business.com, etc.

BOTW and Business.com both have outstanding submission processes. But I'm completely floored at just how poorly the submission processes are from the two "giants," Yahoo and bCentral.

Yahoo was the lessor headache of the two submission processes, simple feeding me a couple of 404 error pages from the $299/yr. submission "Thank You' page. One was their "Get included in Yahoo! search results" page. Is anyone awake at Yahoo? This is poor quality considering their status and need to gain more of a foothold in the search engine market. These errors don't really enforce any "quality" and reliability to the end user. Does Yahoo not manage a QA process for this stuff? You'd think that someone was just making changes to the live version of the site and FTP'ing them up like a Mom and Pop's web site.

bCentral's whole directory submission process has prompted me to give it the "Ultimate Crappy Interface and Thanks for the Headache" award (I convienently meshed two awards into one since they rightly deserve both). Further, I spent about 30 minutes trying to submit our client's web site after paying for the service with bCentral. I ended up in an endless loop without any direction. I couldn't even imagine someone with very little experience trying to make it through this horrible submission process.

Of course, the bCentral payment process is at the beginning of the submission process. If it was at the end I'd be surprised if they made any money from it. But even with over 6 years of online marketing know-how and expertise, I had to end up bailing out of their site altogether without even completing the submission.

I sent a support request with the errors and confusion and balked at how I couldn't complete the submission process. Thanks bCentral for such a crappy service and waste of my time!

Are there any other horrible directory service submission processes I need to be aware of? Feel free to let me know by leaving a comment below.