Business sites: separating operators from lead generators

Business is the most commercially contested category in any directory, and the reason is simple: a visitor here may be about to spend money, so the competition for their attention is intense and well funded.

The practical distinction is between sites run by people who do the thing, and sites built to collect enquiries and sell them on. A lead generator looks like an operator: it has a professional design, a national phone number, and a form. What it does not have is a physical address you can check, named people, a registration number, or any content that is specific to a place or a case. Those four things are the fastest test available.

The subcategories below cover finance and investment, small business, education, real estate and multi-level marketing. The last of those is listed rather than hidden, because people search for it and are better served by finding it in a labelled category than by meeting it unannounced somewhere else.

For anything involving money, check whether the site names the regulator it answers to. In most countries financial advice, credit broking and insurance sales all require registration, and a site offering them without naming a registration number is either exempt for a reason it should state, or not registered.