This comes from Local SEO and PPC marketer Jason Channell. It seems the website directory Texas-BusinessDirectory.com is emailing people who submit their business afterwards to click on ads a few times to “improve the quality” of the directory. It’s likely the site is good for local SEO for Texas businesses, but kind of sucks that they could simultaneously be costing businesses money by encouraging clicks on their ads.

Here is an image of the ads in the ‘center of the page’ as mentioned by the email (red box added for emphasis).

I’m not against web directories. I think when done right they can be a valuable resource for users and search engines and I’ve got fond memories of the day when they were the best way to traverse the web just looking up stuff. I even tried my hand at one back in 2008 and was amazed at all the spam I got. I know the struggle of making money off the site is real, but don’t hurt advertisers just to try and make money.