With Google no longer liking directories, where do I get PR?

[allaffiliatepro]

Hi All,
Over the years I've built up a strong list of web directories. Every time I launched a new site, I'd submit to all of them, usually giving my site a PR 4 or 5 a few months later (plus a few links from my current sites).

Now google seems to hate directories and link exchange pages. I've seen almost all my sites drop from PR5 to PR4 or 3. My only PR6 has dropped to PR5, I'm worried it'll go lower

Before someone says it, I know that PR isn't all I should be worried about, but I've got the other stuff covered and it's PR that is now my problem.


If I can't reply on directories or link exchange pages then where am I supposed to go for good links?

Is my only option negotiating home page links with other sites??


Advice please. Thank you.



Lyle

[dom-casino]

Really you really need not have to care about pr...

You just concentrate with serp's rankings,

I am not telling PR is worthless, but if you managed to get upto pr 3 than your website is in Good status, just you need to promote with the keywords.

[kgun]

With Google no longer liking directories, where do I get PR?

By writing good content that people link to in a semantic and contextual way. I think it was and still is the original intention of Googles model based on references / citations.


2.1.1 Description of PageRank Calculation

"Academic citation literature has been applied to the web, largely by counting citations or backlinks to a given page. This gives some approximation of a page's importance or quality. PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page. PageRank is defined as follows:
We assume page A has pages T1...Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. There are more details about d in the next section. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The PageRank of a page A is given as follows:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Note that the PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages' PageRanks will be one.
PageRank or PR(A) can be calculated using a simple iterative algorithm, and corresponds to the principal eigenvector of the normalized link matrix of the web. Also, a PageRank for 26 million web pages can be computed in a few hours on a medium size workstation. There are many other details which are beyond the scope of this paper".

In my view that is still the heart of the model and it is difficult to beat. My bolding.

Advice:
Don't listen to people, some of them call themself SEO experts, that don't have at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics.

[pcunix]

Exactly.

PR isn't supposed to be a game. Google doesn't want to put you to the top of the search results because you artificially gamed the algorithm - they want the top content to be the pages that REAL websites link to and that REAL people will find useful.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by kgun

Advice:
Don't listen to people, some of them call themself SEO experts, that don't have at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics.

I don’t and I do just fine kjell.

Any ways if you build a sound business model and approach marketing not only worrying about search engines but all avenues you will do fine. I am guessing you an affiliater and you build websites to earn commission from "real" websites that sell products and services. if that is the case Google clearly doesn’t like those type of websites appearing in the SERPs, thus your frustration.

[marcel]

Google knows about ranking with directories.

If your website diet consists of mostly directories alone, you will be missing something.
Time to get listed on some blogs (BPFS), mentioned in forums, listed on articles and reviewed/mentioned among your peers.
Pressreleases also helps. Google Pr is not worth anything. Concentrate on improving your rank by using White had and Black hat methods.

IMHO Black Hat is actually anything other than Adwords.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by marcel

IMHO Black Hat is actually anything other than Adwords.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Funniest thing I have read in some time.

[Concept Interest]

Don't listen to people, some of them call themself SEO experts, that don't have at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics.

Kjell: I don't even have a degree in anything - but I made millions on SEO and still do. And even better: My clients make money thanks to my work. SEO expert? I don't know, but I know that the finest education and most suitable for SEO is the famous IBA degree!

IBA you might ask? I've Been Around

[kimber23]

"Advice:
Don't listen to people, some of them call themself SEO experts, that don't have at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics."

you've got to be kidding, right? i know a ton of SEOs who do not have a degree in math. in fact i would venture to guess that the majority of top SEOs do not have a math degree or even claim to be good at math. that advice is absurd!

[kgun]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I don’t and I do just fine kjell.

You know the model, but we may disagree on the importance of stable semantic IBL's that is mirrored in the TbRank.

Note my bolding of may.

In addition, my teacher, former Nobel price winner Trygve Haavelmo teached me to ask:

What if....

What if you had listened more to mathematicians (where it is natural to listen to them)?

And you know the other important factors like KW's, long tail, title tags etc in the end natural content well written for the web.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Concept Interest

Kjell: I don't even have a degree in anything - but I made millions on SEO and still do. And even better: My clients make money thanks to my work. SEO expert? I don't know, but I know that the finest education and most suitable for SEO is the famous IBA degree!

IBA you might ask? I've Been Around

Read my comment to incrediblehelp. What if ...

Millions in free cash flow or ...

Originally Posted by Concept Interest

Kjell: I don't even have a degree in anything - but I made millions on SEO and still do. And even better: My clients make money thanks to my work. SEO expert? I don't know, but I know that the finest education and most suitable for SEO is the famous IBA degree!

IBA you might ask? I've Been Around

You know, Scandinavia is filled with too much ad money that some companies throw after nearly anything. It is much worse in Norway than in Denmark. SEO is not so mispriced there. I have talked to people that paid NOK 13 000 (more than USD 2000) / month for Digital Ad to a very local online newspaper (village with 30 000 inhabitants) with a broken link when we checked it.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by kimber23

you've got to be kidding, right? i know a ton of SEOs who do not have a degree in math. in fact i would venture to guess that the majority of top SEOs do not have a math degree or even claim to be good at math. that advice is absurd!

To be more precise, do you

1. Learn enough mathematic on high school to understand the PageRank model cited above?
2. Do you think that stable relevant and semantic IBL's are important?
3. Do you think that these links are mirrored or reflected in the toolbar rank?

Originally Posted by AcmeSEO

Actually, "contextual" indexing and retrieval has been part of the algo at the "theme-based" engines (Google, Alltheweb and Lycos) for a couple years now at least. Some of the components are Latent Symantic Indexing and Term Vectoring. If you've got the patience and time, Study those subjects. My Clients and I have been prospering from knowledge of how this works for almost two years now. And I agree that this area is the most interesting and where many of the coolest innovations of search marketing are and will be appearing.

Optimized regards,

Robert

Next Gen Search: Thinking Engines

And generally I knew sombody came here and claimed forget PageRank. That is forget stable contextual IBL's.

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Any ways if you build a sound business model and approach marketing not only worrying about search engines but all avenues you will do fine. I am guessing you an affiliater and you build websites to earn commission from "real" websites that sell products and services. if that is the case Google clearly doesn’t like those type of websites appearing in the SERPs, thus your frustration.

Yes.

Originally Posted by kgun

With Google no longer liking directories, where do I get PR?

By writing good content that people link to in a semantic and contextual way. I think it was and still is the original intention of Googles model based on references / citations.

Same message, different words?

To those of you that come here to tell forget, (internal, directory or toolbar) pagerank, ask a person that want to take a Dr degree or publish his article in a (scinetific) journal or magazine about the importance of being cited or referenced. I can tell you some publishers will only take a fast look at papers and journals where (s)he is cited / referenced and use that and not the content of his article as a basis for a final decision. Marketing is a type of drama, and it is not so much about who you are as about who people believe you are until they finally understand that they coud have used their money more efficiently. It will be more important in the future as the web gets more mature. Of course not so important for an adsite for and offline business, but

How will a site on an isolated server with no link / citation be found?

You and your competitor Joe Ant owns a physical store. You sell the same product. Both of you put up a similar ad site? Joa Ant gets 10 relevant IBL's to his site. You none. And your site has the largest Ad potential? Forget contextual IBL's my friend, and as long as there is a SE called Google based on the adaptive inverted link matrix model of the web, that dominates the market, you will loose money, that theoretically can take you out of the market for ever.

[sandis.viksna]

Well, guess you need more links from authority/content type sites in your niche. Directories are mix of everything and usually little content on the pages so your backlinks are coming from thin sites. Also more of marketing mix - from article directories and forums, social sites and so on.

[kimber23]

How will a site on an isolated server with no link / citation be found?

it obviously can't. i'm pretty sure all SEOs know links (specifically the quality of links) are important with or without a math degree.

To be more precise, do you
1. Learn enough mathematic on high school to understand the PageRank model cited above?
2. Do you think that stable relevant and semantic IBL's are important?
3. Do you think that these links are mirrored or reflected in the toolbar rank?

1. yes, as much as i need to in order to successfully achieve the SEO results i want.
2. yes.
3. yes.

this is basic SEO if you ask me. no math needed.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by kimber23

this is basic SEO if you ask me. no math needed.

I was intentionally provocative, since I knew people would come here and tell forget pagerank. You don't need to understand how the engine is build to be a good driver

[SEO]

Hmmm...

I was working full time at 14 yrs old...
Didn't even finish junior high school...

But I look at that little green "page rank" line...
And I know that the longer it is... the more valuable a link to my website from that page will be.
And the more of those little green suckers I can get pointing at my pages...
The quicker I can save up for my maths degree...
So that I can become a real SEO...


Lyle:

Get yourself a copy of "SEO Elite" or something similar...
Research your competition (analyze their backlink strategy)...
And then do what they do...
... But... Do it better.... !

[pattayabridge]

The PR algorithm quoted by Kjell Gunnar is very far from what Google actually do (and I do have an honours degree in mathematics). Incoming links no longer seem to have any positive impact on PR. I know this for a fact by just looking at the PR of my sites. Internal pages have been randomly allocated PR3 or PR0 with nothing inbetween. My main page, which has over 1000 incoming links, has dropped from PR5 to PR4. But my 'joke' Wordpress site that I set up just to link to a few pages of my main site is now PR5 with only about a dozen inbound links.
And please don't try to tell me that Google likes good unique content - thats also untrue. My internal pages all have unique useful content and many have now dropped to PR0.
In short, Google PR is simply a joke. But unfortunately it IS important. Unfortunately only Google really knows how they seemingly randomly allocate PR.
The only real advice that I can offer is to start a Wordpress site linking to your pages - wordpress sites obtain good PR (4-5) very quickly if they are updated regularly.

[vwickam]

I wouldn't worry so much about PR. While page rank plays into the google equation, Google's real goal is to serve the most relavent site, not just the most reputable site.

The goal of your inbound links should be generating traffic, not just page rank.

Goog Luck!

<please add you link to your signature CD>

PS. I have a minor in Math, but don't think that it has any bearing on my SEO or SEM skills.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by SEO

But I look at that little green "page rank" line...
And I know that the longer it is... the more valuable a link to my website from that page will be.
And the more of those little green suckers I can get pointing at my pages...
The quicker I can save up for my maths degree...

1) How do you know that the PR value reported by that "little green line" is the actual PR that is passable via IBLs?

2) How do you know at what point in time that "little green line" represents?

3) How do you know that the value of that "little green line" will be in the future?

3) How do you know what fraction of that "little green line's" value is actually passed to you?

In all, how do you determine which "little green lines" are potentially of the greatest value to you? It's not necessarily the "longest" ones.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by pattayabridge

The PR algorithm quoted by Kjell Gunnar is very far from what Google actually do (and I do have an honours degree in mathematics). Incoming links no longer seem to have any positive impact on PR. I know this for a fact by just looking at the PR of my sites. Internal pages have been randomly allocated PR3 or PR0 with nothing inbetween. My main page, which has over 1000 incoming links, has dropped from PR5 to PR4. But my 'joke' Wordpress site that I set up just to link to a few pages of my main site is now PR5 with only about a dozen inbound links.
And please don't try to tell me that Google likes good unique content - thats also untrue. My internal pages all have unique useful content and many have now dropped to PR0.
In short, Google PR is simply a joke. But unfortunately it IS important. Unfortunately only Google really knows how they seemingly randomly allocate PR.
The only real advice that I can offer is to start a Wordpress site linking to your pages - wordpress sites obtain good PR (4-5) very quickly if they are updated regularly.

Incoming PR does [b]not[b] equal SERP, and was never intended to, but is merely a portion of it; the PR algorithm is but one of several employed in determining SERP.

Consider this: where does the value passed via any kind of link originate?

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by pattayabridge

The PR algorithm quoted by Kjell Gunnar is very far from what Google actually do (and I do have an honours degree in mathematics). Incoming links no longer seem to have any positive impact on PR. I know this for a fact by just looking at the PR of my sites. Internal pages have been randomly allocated PR3 or PR0 with nothing inbetween. My main page, which has over 1000 incoming links, has dropped from PR5 to PR4. But my 'joke' Wordpress site that I set up just to link to a few pages of my main site is now PR5 with only about a dozen inbound links.
And please don't try to tell me that Google likes good unique content - thats also untrue. My internal pages all have unique useful content and many have now dropped to PR0.
In short, Google PR is simply a joke. But unfortunately it IS important. Unfortunately only Google really knows how they seemingly randomly allocate PR.
The only real advice that I can offer is to start a Wordpress site linking to your pages - wordpress sites obtain good PR (4-5) very quickly if they are updated regularly.

Incoming PR does not equal SERP, and was never intended to, but is merely a portion of it; the PR algorithm is but one of several employed in determining SERP.

Consider this: where does the value passed via any kind of link originate?

[SEO]

Originally Posted by deepsand

1) How do you know that the PR value reported by that "little green line" is the actual PR that is passable via IBLs?

2) How do you know at what point in time that "little green line" represents?

3) How do you know that the value of that "little green line" will be in the future?

3) How do you know what fraction of that "little green line's" value is actually passed to you?

In all, how do you determine which "little green lines" are potentially of the greatest value to you? It's not necessarily the "longest" ones.

The "little green line" (or white) tells you that the page is indexed by Google. When a website is 'banned' by google it loses its "little green line" within a matter of days.

Now... to answer your questions do I need common sense... or mathematics...?

Am I going to sit down and work out mathematically what fraction of that "little green line's" value is actually passed to me...? There are many variables that would need to be taken into account... Is the website theme relevant to your website...? Is the page theme relevant to your website...? How many other outbound (or inbound for that matter) links are on the page...? Is my chosen keyword, domain name, or an image used to link to my site...? Does he use "rel=nofollow" links...? Does he use javascript links...? Does his "robots.txt" prevent spiders from accessing his "link" page...? Is the link in bold or H1 text...? Is the link in the middle of an informative article or in the middle of 100 other links on a page...? will my link stay on the page with Google PR or will the next link added push me onto page 2 which has no PR...? And many... many... other factors also come into the equation.

I don't think that even Isaac Newton could work that out mathematically... !

Or am I going to say to myself... Hmmm... I have a (Real Estate site for example)... He has a (real estate) site... My little green line says two... his Big green line says 7 (Or my little green line says 4 or 5 or 6 and his is similar)... check other factors listed above... Do I want to link to him (his credibility)... Bang... relevant text link with passing PR.

The only mathematics I had to do was count how many fingers his PR equals (If it takes two hands to count I start to get excited)...

And you are right deepsand... Incoming PR does not equal SERP... But it is a fairly good indicator that a relevant text link from such a page will hold some weight with Google.

[Orion]

Just because google may not be using directory listings towards your PR (not that I care personally) doesn't mean directory listings aren't valuable.

A portion of traffic on most of my and my clients sites are still either directly or indirectly resultant of a listing somewhere in (usually) a vertical directory.

Having said that, I'm personally blown away by the power of blogging and having just a few people link from their blogs to a site. I've seen traffic double on a site within a couple of days of posting a decent article (it falls off after a day or so). It shows you the power of regular posting though.

[scanmonkey]

Free directories that are human edited are still good for a boost in the anchor text.

However the high pr directories were google slapped last September and no longer give the bang for the buck.

Originally Posted by Orion

Just because google may not be using directory listings towards your PR (not that I care personally) doesn't mean directory listings aren't valuable.

A portion of traffic on most of my and my clients sites are still either directly or indirectly resultant of a listing somewhere in (usually) a vertical directory.

Having said that, I'm personally blown away by the power of blogging and having just a few people link from their blogs to a site. I've seen traffic double on a site within a couple of days of posting a decent article (it falls off after a day or so). It shows you the power of regular posting though.

Vertical or niche directories can be great for traffic. Especially if the directory is well promoted.

[saikatblogger]

Google no longer liking directories, where do I get PR?

Present algo may not rely on directory links, but it seems Google has started changing its algo randomly. So you never know when it starts counting those directory links again.

If I am asked to submit my sites to directories, I will go for human edited good directories only.

[Pico_Train]

You are right some directories, especially the poor quality ones, have been downgraded in value but there are still quality directories out there for your site. But that shouldn't be the only place to get links. Keep looking around for potential exchanges, pertinent forums, blogs and other to ooadd value to those by adding your two cents, just like we all do here. As said above, old devalued might come back again in one big circle in the near future to help you once again.

[khurramali]

SEE - Search Engine Engineers, the people who work at Google, the people who work on these algorithms, they need the degrees, masters and Phds in Mathematics.

There are no standards in the Search Engine Optimization Game.

so anyone who can display good results can claim to be an SEO.

[najam]

I really agree that Google now ignoring link directories - even Google is penalizing these directories by dropping their PageRank. No only PageRank but all effecting your SERPs.

My 3 web sites that were getting 500 - 1000 daily page views now getting only 150 - 300 daily page views after being affected by Google's this algo. Even my 2 sites' PR is still 5.

I learnt about these tips at KISS SEO - Keep It Short & Simple SEO Guide - The Simplest Way to Get Top Rankings! on May 11 and started working on some more content-based sites after reading these SEO tips.

[allaffiliatepro]

pattayabridge - I like you comments about Wordpress. Now I have noticed that looking through my all my sites (and I have a lot with a lot of content) the link of pages Google is trying to totally ignore seem to be directory pages and link pages. Also I've noticed a lot on contact us and about us pages without PR.

Seems googles new strategy is to totally cut out some pages rather than just rank them down.

One thing I've noticed for sure is that google now appears to love blog pages, which goes with your WordPress comment. So as far as I can see a good tactic is to try and get bloggers interested in what you have, and start blogging yourself.

sandis.viksna - i like your comments, I was thinking more about article sites and alike...


To most of the other posts, considering that in my original post I specifically put:-

"Before someone says it, I know that PR isn't all I should be worried about, but I've got the other stuff covered and it's PR that is now my problem."

To get a load of the usual replies of "PR isn't all you should be worried about".. is well, frustrating to say the least. Almost as annoying of the usual "content you need better content", this isn't field of dreams, if you build it and don't have any good links and PR then they certainly WILL NOT come. Even with great content you need to get some links in to get people finding you in the first place.

And the old "you should be focusing on search engine ranking and not PR", I think everyone is doing this. Kind of goes without saying.
If you check our all the sites in the top 10 for you targeted term as I do, then you should know where all of their key words appear, in what tags, and at what density, you should also know what kind of sites are linking to them (googles backlink lookup is filtered so your usually better off using yahoo for this) and what page rank the sites are.
If all the sites are PR4-7 in the top 10 then it's a pretty damned safe bet that to get on that first page your going to need a PR of 4 or above! You can focus on every other thing under the sun and adjust your on page factors until you are blue in the face, but the fact is that you need good PR to rank on the first page for most terms. Unless you are very niche and targeting "some terms that no one types and no one has a page for".


Sorry to sound cynical, but what frustrates me most about posting to these forums is the people who think it's cool to make the same old meaning less comments to every post about PR.

To those of you who did make useful points and comments, I thank you very much


Lyle

[kgun]

To clearify a few points.

Originally Posted by SEO

And you are right deepsand... Incoming PR does not equal SERP... But it is a fairly good indicator that a relevant text link from such a page will hold some weight with Google.

Of course. There are many factors.

Originally Posted by Orion

Just because google may not be using directory listings towards your PR (not that I care personally) doesn't mean directory listings aren't valuable.

Yes, and it is a good way for a Bot to find your site.

[ctabuk]

No one appears to have answered the original point - he stated that Google no longer seems to like Directories - Wrong

Some Directories like Directory and Search Engine JoeAnt.com - My Green Corner still carry considerable weight and value to a sites internal pagerank and I would bet that there are thousands more that do the same thing and that is so simple.

They have good pages full of related topic sites to your own and that if you use the correct anchor text to the correct landing page. Unless you control (as best you can!!) how you link in and out from each page and totally ignore the supposed pagerank and go for relativity of subject then SERP which is all that really counts will come as a bonus. Ignore good directories at your peril.

[rattlesnakedriver]

of course not all link directories are equal. which brings up the question, does anyone have an updated list of some quality link directories, both paid and free?

[ctabuk]

Pheedster Directories List Page #1 the list there is where I started and still use it on new sites.

[rattlesnakedriver]

shazam...thanks ctabuk!

[kgun]

Originally Posted by rattlesnakedriver

does anyone have an updated list of some quality link directories, both paid and free?

Yes, so you can stay there some days.

I don't need to drop a link, since it is already the second link in my signature.

Click "Search" in upper right corner, the link to the left of the "Digg" bookmark.

[davidweb]

Google does play the juggler, and we all set our eyes on the objects being flown into air one by one.

Google Page Rank has ABSOLUTELY, DEFINITELY, 100%, SURE SHOT not having any relationship with ACTUAL RANKINGS of your website.

It is of no use to chase directories on the basis of their PAGE RANK. If Google/Yahoo launches a new directory, I am sure it will remain PR 0 for 3 months atleast. Now 90% of the webmasters will surely abstain from adding site to a PR <0 site.

Now suppose, at the beginning of March, PR was updated to 5. However, this directory was showing PR0 on 29th February. Does this mean that website or directory was worthless on 29th February, and suddenly a magical fairy turned it into a Golden Goose the very next day by updating its Page Rank on Google Toolbar as PR 5.

If your actual rankings have dropped only then you should be concerned. The only benefit a Page rank can give you is while getting listed in directories where link are organised according to their PR. Other than that there is no significance of page rank at all.

If you can, then try to explore and understand issues revolving around TRUST RANK which is used by both Google and Yahoo while granting rankings.

I would like to say sorry in advance to anyone who disagrees with me , but I will remain firm on my stand regarding Page Rank. It has no relationship with the actual SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS OF YOUR WEBSITE.

[kgun]

This is more or less subjective speculation. I quoted an algorithme that nobody so far has proved is no longer the heart of the pagerank algorithme.

Originally Posted by pattayabridge

The PR algorithm quoted by Kjell Gunnar is very far from what Google actually do (and I do have an honours degree in mathematics). Incoming links no longer seem to have any positive impact on PR. I know this for a fact by just looking at the PR of my sites. Internal pages have been randomly allocated PR3 or PR0 with nothing inbetween. My main page, which has over 1000 incoming links, has dropped from PR5 to PR4. But my 'joke' Wordpress site that I set up just to link to a few pages of my main site is now PR5 with only about a dozen inbound links.

And please don't try to tell me that Google likes good unique content - thats also untrue. My internal pages all have unique useful content and many have now dropped to PR0.
In short, Google PR is simply a joke. But unfortunately it IS important. Unfortunately only Google really knows how they seemingly randomly allocate PR.
The only real advice that I can offer is to start a Wordpress site linking to your pages - wordpress sites obtain good PR (4-5) very quickly if they are updated regularly.

Originally Posted by SEO

Am I going to sit down and work out mathematically what fraction of that "little green line's" value is actually passed to me...? There are many variables that would need to be taken into account... Is the website theme relevant to your website...? Is the page theme relevant to your website...? How many other outbound (or inbound for that matter) links are on the page...? Is my chosen keyword, domain name, or an image used to link to my site...? Does he use "rel=nofollow" links...? Does he use javascript links...? Does his "robots.txt" prevent spiders from accessing his "link" page...? Is the link in bold or H1 text...? Is the link in the middle of an informative article or in the middle of 100 other links on a page...? will my link stay on the page with Google PR or will the next link added push me onto page 2 which has no PR...? And many... many... other factors also come into the equation.

I don't think that even Isaac Newton could work that out mathematically... !

Originally Posted by davidweb

Google does play the juggler, and we all set our eyes on the objects being flown into air one by one.

Google Page Rank has ABSOLUTELY, DEFINITELY, 100%, SURE SHOT not having any relationship with ACTUAL RANKINGS of your website.

It is of no use to chase directories on the basis of their PAGE RANK. If Google/Yahoo launches a new directory, I am sure it will remain PR 0 for 3 months atleast. Now 90% of the webmasters will surely abstain from adding site to a PR <0 site.

Now suppose, at the beginning of March, PR was updated to 5. However, this directory was showing PR0 on 29th February. Does this mean that website or directory was worthless on 29th February, and suddenly a magical fairy turned it into a Golden Goose the very next day by updating its Page Rank on Google Toolbar as PR 5.

If your actual rankings have dropped only then you should be concerned. The only benefit a Page rank can give you is while getting listed in directories where link are organised according to their PR. Other than that there is no significance of page rank at all.

If you can, then try to explore and understand issues revolving around TRUST RANK which is used by both Google and Yahoo while granting rankings.

I would like to say sorry in advance to anyone who disagrees with me , but I will remain firm on my stand regarding Page Rank. It has no relationship with the actual SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS OF YOUR WEBSITE.

To repeat, here is the classic PageRank algorithme.

Originally Posted by kgun

With Google no longer liking directories, where do I get PR?

By writing good content that people link to in a semantic and contextual way. I think it was and still is the original intention of Googles model based on references / citations.


2.1.1 Description of PageRank Calculation

"Academic citation literature has been applied to the web, largely by counting citations or backlinks to a given page. This gives some approximation of a page's importance or quality. PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page. PageRank is defined as follows:
We assume page A has pages T1...Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. There are more details about d in the next section. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The PageRank of a page A is given as follows:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Note that the PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages' PageRanks will be one.
PageRank or PR(A) can be calculated using a simple iterative algorithm, and corresponds to the principal eigenvector of the normalized link matrix of the web. Also, a PageRank for 26 million web pages can be computed in a few hours on a medium size workstation. There are many other details which are beyond the scope of this paper".

In my view that is still the heart of the model and it is difficult to beat. My bolding.

Advice:
Don't listen to people, some of them call themself SEO experts, that don't have at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics.

Before you can tell anything about that algorithme, you have to understand it.

Here

Google PageRank - Introduction

is an easier article collection. You do not need to have a background in Newtonian mathematics to understand those articles.

And you complicate the original post by talking about the SERP's and the 200 factors or more that influences the SERP pages. To repeat:

Re: With Google no longer liking directories, where do I get PR?

Don't make it more complicated than it should be. It is about pagerank and inbound links or (weighted) votes if you prefer.

Stop speculating and answer the topic that I think I have done so far (written in green above) and giving a link collection with a lot of directories to submit to if that is your business.

[Lorel509]

Free directories that are human edited are still good for a boost in the anchor text.

However the high pr directories were google slapped last September and no longer give the bang for the buck.

I have noticed, since the last PR update a few weeks ago, that some of the directories that used to be PR 0 now have PR on their linking pages again.

[rickanderson]

Originally Posted by pattayabridge

And please don't try to tell me that Google likes good unique content - thats also untrue.

Shush...I don't want to hear that...not while I'm in the middle of my ocr program.

Rick

[AVC]

You don't "get PR", it is assigned to your website by Google based on many factors, and can be stripped away in one day if you get caught getting PR (buying it via paid links or through reciprocal linking schemes).

[mark.smith]

Hi,


I am agree with the facts that PR alone is not a vital factor when you are looking for the business through the sites.
i have worked on various projects ,while many of them having as low as 2 PR, but despite that they are displaying in top on SE RP and i really think thats matter only for me and my client, because in the end they want some real business on their site instead of PR.

So Don't worry about that..........

have a nice day..

[rickanderson]

Originally Posted by mark.smith

in the end they want some real business on their site instead of PR.

Hi Mark

True true; the *only* thing I care about is staying atop the organics which lead to a lot of business which equals cash.
I wouldn't give 2 cents to know or care about page rank....unless it directly affected my organic domination.