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NuclearDirectories

Qualified-lead definition

Version 1.0 · Last updated April 29, 2026

A qualified lead is a contact-form submission that passes all six of the following checks at the moment of submission. Only qualified leads are billable. Leads that fail one or more checks are still surfaced in your inbox tagged unverified, but never billed and never count toward your plan’s free pool.

The six checks

  1. Email format + MX record. The visitor’s email matches the standard local@domain.tld format and the domain has at least one valid MX record at the time of submission.
  2. Phone is a 10-digit US number. Stripped of formatting and a leading 1, the phone resolves to a 10-digit number. We do not currently restrict by VOIP/landline carrier, but reserve the right to filter known SMS-spam ranges in future versions.
  3. Time-on-form ≥ 5 seconds. The browser-side timestamp captured when the form rendered is at least 5,000 milliseconds before submit. Submissions with a missing, zero-valued, or future-dated timestamp fail this check.
  4. IP not on bot/proxy block-list. We screen against a maintained list of known bot, datacenter, and high-risk proxy ranges. Submissions from a localhost or invalid address fail.
  5. No duplicate within 30 days. The same email or phone has not submitted to the same business in the previous 30 days. Repeat submissions are surfaced for context but not billed.
  6. Honeypot field empty. A hidden field invisible to humans is empty on submit. Bots that fill all form inputs trip this check immediately.

Audit trail

Every submission’s per-check pass/fail evidence is recorded server-side in a tamper-evident log. If you dispute a billed lead, we use this log to confirm or credit the charge — see Refund policy for the dispute window and process.

Why this matters

A directory that bills you for every form submission rewards spam. Pay-per-qualified-lead aligns our incentives with yours: we filter aggressively because we don’t earn anything on a lead that wouldn’t earn you anything either.

Versioning

This definition is versioned. When we materially change the rules, version goes up, the prior version stays online, and we email every owner with active billing.

Pricing references this URL by name — https://www.nucleardirectories.com/legal/lead-definition — so contracts always resolve to the current canonical version.