I hate no follows as a general idea (There is a thread in the coop section where I expand on that) so I hate to see ANYBODY use them. Not because of SEO benefits but for other reasons. I would however propose that maybe business.com is purposely using them to discourage people buying links for PR. From their standpoint, they want good quality listings to add value for their visitors. If adding no follows lowers the amount of bad submissions they get, it only makes them more efficient and lowers costs.
They would be better employing more selective editors IMO. I would never link anywhere that was not a good site whether the link was nofollowed or not.
That explains why I could never find google recording any backlinks from sites listed in that directory. Which I never signed any of my sites up with them. Always check for backlink recording in google.
If you look closely this business.com is really shity besides the “nofolow†on a $199 link, you have “sponsored listings†on the middle of the listings that are google adsense adverts, then you have on the right more “sponsored listings†looks almost like a made for adsense site I don’t now how much traffic this directory delivers with a alexa score of 1,726 , from my experience even big traffic directories like dmoz (Alexa 172) and yahoo don’t deliver a loot of traffic. By the way if you buy 40 x $5 featured links on small directories you probably will get more PR more exposure and more traffic.
Those aren't adsense ads. http://www.business.com/info/advertisewithus.asp?mkt=bdc.se.header And I receive over 30 referrals per day (to one site) from business.com
If you put the mouse over the Sponsored Links You will see the adsense url with the www.google.com on it, after you click It doesn’t show Yes, the Sponsored Listings are google adsense Very nice that you get 30 referrals so in your case is probably worth it Do you know how they get their traffic? Trough adwords or natural search or other!
Ahh yes, the bottom ones are adsense. I never knew that. b.com ranks very well on Google (organic) for some of my search terms.
Take a closer look they have 3 blocks everything under sponsored link is adsense They have one after feature links, one in the right column and one in the bottom If you are doing adwords some traffic could come from your adverts and not directly form the link you have there. I have seen made for adsense sites with less adverts I think they are only using the “nofollow†on the PPC listings not on the regular ones the URL is very different and it’s not direct.
You know, I haven't even looked at business.com in a while. When did they move to this layout? It's absolutely horrendous! -Resources -Featured Listings -Sponsored Links -More Featured Listings -Listings -Sponsored Links WTF!?!?!