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This is probably the side of the fence that I fall on in terms of this issue. If I see that obtaining links from paid directories isn't only not hurting our major competitors, but actually seemingly helping them rank on the first page and outrank us for many keywords, then I am natually going to assume that those links are helping their rankings. One of our major competitors outranks us for more than one of our main targetted keywords and, having checked their link profile again today, they clearly invest a lot in obtaining links from directories, not many of them are relevant, what you would call reputable on first look and one is French, not even being in the site's own language! Furthermore, although they don't do it for every link they have on directory sites, they have many links that use keyword-specific anchor text. Now, this is something that I would hesitate doing as often as they do, rather I would use branded anchor text when unsure of the validity of a link as I would expect that to carry less of a penalty if that were to happen, but it's clearly not hurting their rankings, instead seeming to help them. In any case, this is why I referred to the use of directory links as somewhat of a grey area - it's not completely clear as to whether it's a viable link-building option or not. Given what I've seen of our competitors, I have to come to the conclusion that it's worth the risk.

If duplicate content does between two sites owned by the same company exist what is generally the outcome? Does one site rank and not the other? Are both sites penalised? Does location influence the site that ranks?

Is one domain with four directories an option? If so, that's what I'd probably go for (as long as the four products don't compete with each other directly). The reason for this is that I imagine you have a finite resource pool: using those resources on one website rather than four websites or subdomains (remember that search engines treat different subdomains in much the same way as different root domains - as separate entities) will be the most efficient way to use them, giving you the best chance of success.

Thank you. I've corrected that mistake straight away and will speak to my friend in Dubai to see if she can get together a list of possible local links.