This morning I received a mail inviting me to freely submit a listing for my business at PhuketRatings.com, a new business directory for Phuket, Phangnga and Krabi. Of course I duly registered, highly questionable if it will ever bring me a single extra Baht of turnover, but as the saying in my native language goes: "You never know how a cow catches a hare". Not the first time I register for something like this, people keep on trying. Could be of marginal interest for Phuket etc. business owners.

It's free so what's the difference if you get business or not, no loss to you

One more source of SPAM?

That site at phuketratings.com is a directory website - so the only business you will get will be through people finding you on it. Unless they know the business name they will likely look in the category they are searching for and then at the presentation and information that looks like the business might give them what they are looking for. I've promoted myself through these types of sites and found that my best results came from the listings where I actually sat down and tried to write a somewhat appealing intro and description. The more meat and less fluff the better. Most people can't be bothered to spend even 10 minutes to write a few paragraphs and then expect some return - why?

I see that site has a few listings with images and decent descriptions and lots of businesses that have a crappy description and no images. I know which businesses I would rather do business with!

At the end of the day the content written by the business owner will be the content found by google which is the medium that generates the traffic. The more content the better. If all you've got is 'Lovely silk shop in Phuket' then there really won't be much content google can see and that's a pretty good match for not much content anyone will be interested in - so you will be invisible.

I note that they allow you to write quite a lot for a free site - I wonder what one of the other directory sites would charge for that - I would be taking advantage of that if I lived in Phuket anymore - its a free webpage for me - just as good or maybe better than a page on my own site as far as google is concerned. If that gets some of my keywords up in the rankings then I am pretty sure I would get some leads I would not otherwise have got. Pity they are not in my area!