There are many types of business directories now available online for consumers to use. On the whole, though, the best ones are the paid or human-edited ones. There are several reasons to back up this assertion, and they all have to do with convenience for the consumer.

First off, a paid or human-edited business directory is more likely to provide quality results. The free directories, while wonderful for those start-up businesses whose owners do not yet have sufficient capital to fund their advertising, are more likely to have low-quality, unreliable entries in their listings. This can be bad news to consumers, especially in case a scam business happens to worm its way into the directory.

In a paid or human-edited business directory, the chances of this happening are significantly lower. For paid directories, the fee is often enough to ward off unreliable or scamming people. The higher the payments for inclusion into the directory, the more powerful the prohibition becomes against those who might be seeking inclusion into the directory only so that they can direct consumers down a less-than-scenic commercial path. The high prices for inclusion into the directory function as a sort of filter for exclusivity. Most scammers or less-than-serious businessmen will stay away when faced with such a high entry fee; it is just too big an investment for a scam business setup, in most cases.

In the case of a human-edited business, you have a prohibitive filter acting to sift out the unreliable entries as well, perhaps even a more effective one than in the case of most paid directories. The people running these directories tend to take their time evaluating whether or not a business deserves inclusion in their lists, taking into account such things as the business’s reputation, the customer reviews for the company’s services, the business’s official rating on commercial boards, and the like. This is why it actually takes quite a while for a business to be added to such directories: there are often rather long wait lists for them as the editors have to investigate the merits of a submitted business first.

These directories also tend to contain useful information such as links to reviews for the company as well as relevant contact info and addresses. This is clearly a case of quality over quantity: there are often more entries to be found in the unpaid directories, but if you want reliability, a paid or edited business directory is probably your best bet.