How sites are assessed
Every site goes through the same steps, with the same thresholds, including the directory owner's own sites.
1. A visit
Our crawler opens the site in a real browser from the UK, at desktop size (1280×800) and at phone size (390×844). It loads the home page, one game page, and the site's about page if it has one. It notes whether the page fits on a phone, whether there's a sign-up or log-in, any prices mentioned, and links to app stores.
Sites that block automated visitors, ask not to be indexed, look parked or for sale, or start a download as soon as they open are not listed.
2. Advertising
Advertising is measured, not judged. While the pages load we record every request to known advertising networks, count visible ad slots, measure how much of the first screen they cover, and look for full-screen (interstitial) ads and video ads. Those measurements map to a level:
| Level | When |
|---|---|
| No ads detected | No advertising networks load and no ad slots are visible. |
| Light | Some advertising, below every "moderate" threshold. |
| Moderate | 3 or more ad slots, ads covering 12% or more of a desktop screen or 25% of a phone screen, a header-bidding ad system, or 3 or more ad networks. |
| Heavy | A full-screen or video ad, 6 or more ad slots, or ads covering 30% or more of a desktop screen or 50% of a phone screen. |
Phones have their own thresholds because a single standard ad box covers about a quarter of a phone screen. Cookie-consent pop-ups don't count as ads. Advertising changes from visit to visit, so each listing shows what we saw and when, and "No ads detected" means exactly that.
3. Describing the site
The facts gathered on the visit (never the raw page) are passed to an AI model, Claude by Anthropic, which classifies the site and writes a short tagline, summary and "worth visiting" line in its own words. It is told to use only those facts.
- Wording that repeats six or more words in a row from the site is rejected and rewritten.
- Each field comes with a confidence score. Anything below 50% confidence is published as "Not yet assessed" instead of a guess.
- Advertising and devices are never decided by the model; they come from the measurements above.
4. The quality check
A listing is only published automatically if the overall confidence is at least 70% and nothing looks wrong. Sites are held for a person to look at if, for example:
- the page mentions gambling or adult content, even in passing;
- the site redirects to a different site, or is one page within a larger one;
- it may be mainly a landing page for an app;
- it shares a name or address with an existing listing.
Gambling, real-money play, adult content and deceptive downloads are never listed.
5. Keeping listings current
Listings are rechecked regularly. Each one shows when it was first added and last checked, and which pages were used. Manual corrections always take priority over automatic checks. If something looks wrong, ask for a correction.