Well, the main benefits of signature links are: Signature links may receive clicks depending on the forum (if you are in active forum and contributing to the forum then you would managed to get visitors from forums also) Forum content is indexed faster than others as well. Forums are discussion place so if the links are used in signature then it would also give your site/business popularity or you can clear any doubt if your any customer asked directly as you are active in that forum this thing is also helping in your business. As forum signature receives clicks and if you are continuously building links in signature then it would help in ranking your site good as search engine would track that your site is getting visitors from all over the world.. For example: if your competitors are receiving 100 visitors per day being on the first place of Google and your site is not in even 100 results of Google.com but you are active in some related forums and you are getting visitors more than 100 then your site would beat your competitor sites in few days and it would be on the first position of Google in even one week as Google would consider that your site is more worthy then the site which is already on the first position.............. the main thing is understanding algorithm of search engine, you have to understand algorithm first.... from my point of view, Google is working for the society so Google thinks that your site is worthy having known that there are lots of visitors from all part of the site compared to your competitors then it would be on the first ranking..... let me know if you didn't understand completely....
Good post. I like the way you are talking about traffic. Most people believe that signature links are only for backlinks. As simple007 said they are not much of use after Panda update. The best benefit of signature link is valuable traffic and business conversion from it.
Signature links help to improve traffic. Especially for outstanding comment, it will attract user click your links.
Are you sure Google is ignoring signature links? Forum signatures are great because not only are you driving traffic but you were also helping improve your page rank if the forum was DoFollow. Most are dofollow.
Even though they seems to have less important for ranking, they do help in better, faster indexing in search engines. But, they should be do-follow links.
If you are the member of a really good forum then it pays to put links in your signature as, these links carry weight and are among the quickest of the links to get noticed by the search engines.