Hotfrog and BOTW Analysis

[seo_plus]

Hi,

Just curious if people see a benefit from BOTW / HotFrog as offered here in the Moz Local stuff.

I was always under the impression that stuff offered here would be "of quality" however I just did a bit of background checking and both of these seem to be marked with nofollow, and I'm guessing some of it has been for a long time.

Are there other benefits that accrue?  BOTW is not cheap, and while HotFrog is cheap, I feel a need to be somewhat wary of these options - but I SO want to trust the MOZ brand!

Moz is pretty well known for excellent analysis - so...  has anyone done any recent analysis on this?

Is everything going away??

Please tell me it ain't so!

thanks!!

[MichaelCole]

Great question! I'm Director of Engineering for Moz Local, and we think both Hotfrog and Best of the Web are important for us to deliver the value of Moz Local’s listing management. That said, we at aren't using them for link building.

The way we look at Hotfrog and Best of the Web (and all of our partners) is not around the direct value of the links on their sites, but what their place is in the local ecosystem (https://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-us). Here’s what we consider important in a partner:

• Are they (directly or indirectly) one of the many sources of local listing information used by major search engines?
• Do their listings help ensure that our customers’ locations can be found with correct information outside of major search engines?

Our approach has always been to make sure we have partners who can help us provide us much coverage as possible so we can ensure that the data you give us is consistent everywhere, and we can reduce the amount of inaccurate data that’s out there. Of course, as the local ecosystem changes, we evaluate whether our partners are meeting those needs — the industry doesn’t stand still and we can’t either.