Directory submission: Guidelines for submitting a blog and Blog selection criteria

The spirit behind the compilation of lists of top blogs

We have been compiling the Directory of Best Indian Blogs and the Directory of Best Hindi Blogs for 12 years and have made a number of changes in selecting blogs for the Directory. Starting with a complex formula that used Google PageRank, Alexa position, page views, etc, we changed to manual picking and have humanized our criteria progressively over the years.

For the purpose of the Directories, a website maintained in a way that it is regularly updated with new articles (posts) is taken as a blog. A blog's design is such that posts are much more prominent than other content.

We believe that blogging is both a personal and social activity, and we do not hold a case against blogs on very personal matters as long as they meet our selection criteria. So, while a spirited, well-composed and regularly updated blog on one’s kid, dog or garden may get included, an extremely dull blog with copy-pasted newspaper columns, not allowing any sharing or interaction and not caring to provide any archive would get left out even though its content prima facie might look substantive.

If we find great blogs, we’d not bind ourselves to a maximum number of blogs in the Directory. However, we intend to have a strict filtering for quality [as explained below] and end up with no more than 250 blogs in the Directory of Best Indian Blogs and 150 blogs in the Directory of Best Hindi Blogs. Blogs as young as 9 months are eligible for the Directory listing. However if they are not regular or slip on quality, we'd remove them in the next six months.

Since 2021, we have started including commercial blogs in our Directories. Though we remain committed to encouraging the spirit of blogging and promoting individual blogs, we did not want to exclude informative and useful blogs only because these were maintained by businesses. 

How much do we charge for blog listing?

We do not charge a penny for including a blog in a Directory. We only want that you maintain the blog well. That includes quality of content, regularity and no major design issues.

How to submit a blog for being counted as a top blog?

Submission of a blog is not a mandatory requirement for its inclusion in the Directories. However, we sometimes lose sight of good blogs if they are not submitted to us, so it helps when you submit your blog to us through email.

Submit the blog to kp.nd.2008@gmail.com. Please do not forget to mention Hindi/ English in the subject of your email and to give URL/ web address of the blog you want to submit.

Making a comment on a post on ITB and pasting URL on a comment are not the best ways to submit a blog.

If you do not display the archive on the blog, don't forget to include a date-wise list of posts published in the last 12 months.

You can submit more than one blog.

Selection criteria for listing in the blog directories

Language: In the Directory of Best Indian Blogs, non-English blogs are not included. Bilingual blogs are OK if the other language is used unobtrusively and English is the main language. Similarly, in the Directory of Best Hindi Blogs, blogs with Hindi as the main language are included but some posts in English/ other languages are not an issue.

Appropriateness of content: We consider the following content as inappropriate and reject blogs with such content: unacceptable levels of nudity and violence; vulgarity; pornography; abuse; racial, caste or communal denigration or hatred; rumor-mongering; slander; criminality; and other content not considered acceptable in responsible writing and visual/ audio/ audio-visual presentations. Propaganda is not welcome; promotion of universally accepted social and moral values or a just cause with wide appeal is. If the blog or its content is found indulging in plagiarism or copyright infringement, it is blacked out.

Advertisements: Blogs with advertisements making more than a third of the homepage content are filtered out. If more than a quarter of content in the blog is automatically generated through feed, the blog is not taken in. [Content in widgets such as recent comments, archives, followers and advertisements is not counted towards this.] News media columns maintained as blogs are included.

Regularity of posting: Blogs that have not been updated [by way of new posts] at least once a month in 9 out of the preceding 12 months are not included. [June to May for the Directory of Best Indian Blogs; October to September for the Directory of Best Hindi Blogs]

Quality: Blogs that pass through the above filters are checked for a number of qualitative attributes. We place a high value on content, followed by regularity. Design is not a deciding criterion but serious design issues could push the blog out. Grammatical correctness of text content is expected but is ignored if the flaws are minor and the overall content quality compensates for them.

Resource base: The blog should have built good resources over time. Blogs with thin content (very small posts, very few post over a period of time) are liable to be rejected.

Content vs features: A blog can find a place in the Directory when the blogger has tried to add value to the blog's content but has not been able to spruce up the blog with modern features.

Blogging craftsmanship: Effort made in blogging as evident from big and small steps taken to improve the quality of presentation, proof-reading of text, use of widgets, etc. find favor with us.

Right now we regularly bring out the two directories of top Indian blogs. We also keep updating lists of best Indian forums, web magazines, etc. At least once a year, we also update the list of topmost blogs in different niches. You can see their links on the right column of Indian Top Blogs (desktop version). Links to the main two  directories are given right here: 

List of top Indian blogs in English

List of top Hindi blogs