What's worse is if you are a service business looking for work, it's usually a disservice to folks looking for "qualified" businesses with a poor reputation and being the worse contractors starving for business...The Home Advisor homeowner/customer gets a list of businesses to choose from that you want to scratch your head and say to yourself "who are these referrals anyway?"
Yelp does this as well...They group Tile and Grout Cleaning and Sealing Professionals in with "tile work" and "grout services" category, so if you're a paying business with Yelp you get leads you pay for work you don't even provide...I argue with them for years about the tile and grout cleaning and sealing category and they do nothing to create it...Recently they tried to add a keyword type function where you can choose your keywords...The keywords they provide are like 1 word and encompass a large general array of leads...Bogus...