Why is Business.com a valuable link when they are all nofollow?

[CHEATERS]

Earlier today, I received a $50 off coupon for a Business.com listing. Back when I was really learning about directories, lots of people recommended getting one of these listings because editors actually review it to make sure the website linked is of good quality. Even the SEOmoz Directory Guide regards it as a good link.

Now, it seems like every outbound link from Business.com has a 'nofollow' tag right when they link to the target website. Furthermore, the actual business listing doesn't even link to the website! Let me take, for example, web design companies:

http://www.business.com/internet/web-design/

This directory has tons of 'nofollow' links. On top of that, if you take any of the companies listed and do a search for their business page, the business page doesn't even have a link to their website! That doesn't exactly seem like it's worth $300 a year...

Any chance there is something I'm missing here? I'm not fully understanding this, it seems.

[donford]

Hi Echolls,

You probably were looking at the sponsors. Those are paid links which are deemed as nofollow. If you scroll down to the directory listings you'll see the follow links with those are people who paid to be in the directory.

Example:

<div class="g3-dl-block">

<a href="http://www.digitalbrands.com" target="_blank">Digital Brands Inc.a><p> Web development firm that creates online and mobile brands in competitive, high-volume verticals. p><a class="g3-dl-prettylink" href="http://www.digitalbrands.com" target="_blank"> http://www.digitalbrands.coma>div>

As far as the value, that comes down to industry. In our industry the major directory is ThomasNet however you only see them in SERP's occasionally on really low traffic keywords, but their site is highly linked, very authoritive and used throughout our industry. So the value of the link is not just SEO but also leads. Picking up 1 job from them can pay for itself. Make sure you not only evaluate the SEO value but the marketing value of each potential listing.

Hope that makes sense.

[bronxpad]

As you already know Yahoo directory, business.com and DMOZ are sites that require a review process and in the first two a large financial investment that prevents spammers from taking advantage of low hanging fruit. They have a do follow attribute when it's part of the directory not the ads. Google trusts these sites.