Death of Google's PR to threaten Directories?

IMO they wouldn't remove/take away the PR from the toolbar but if they do, I would rely on SEOmoz's page strength (They also count PR as a factor) but that can be removed from the measurement and we can have a good idea about the worth of any site.

 

Thats true small / new directories will be the biggest losers , but again if they lose the big directory owners also lose.

 

Big directory owners will always keep having a "strong" website, no matter if PR will exist in the future or if they gonna call it another name.
Big directories will lose, no doubt, but i don't think it will be much.

 

Read the Adam's post on 4th page of webmasters forum

 

Which means current 3-4 monthly PR update will be now 6 months+

 

Already developed directories would not get affected but for new directories it would be hard to 'market'.

 

Don't worry no official announcement from google ... just assumptions from people.

Pagerank is not used by SEO's only (as was the case with supplemental tag), and the reason google introduced pagerank was to help general people determine the authority of a site, so they wont just go and remove it.

 

Google displays the best results because of PR? Thats not true.

And Google invested millions in it, but then Matt Cutts didn't even know that the data export happened for it!?

It's all hype either way you look at it. If PR is scrapped, Google will still be the best SE by a mile and still display relevant results as PR has no effect on SERPs.

The paid link crackdown is to stop spammy sites getting authority backlinks from unrelevant websites. Search manipulation...

 

I think i am also in favor of removing PR as it creates a confusion sometimes... be whatever way it affects google... yes i am though sure about the aftereffects to webmasters who work only on PR but many of others will also be benefited...

Its purely an individual view some will like to have as they have advertised on the websites with high PR... but it sometimes happen to have a higher PR but the website traffic is not at all up to the mark and if you are selling or marketing or affiliating something its all about traffic at the end of the day as traffic only.. could make sales... PR can only give you green-marks

Now its up to you if you want to follow PR or actual traffic...

 

But seriously, why would the average joe want to see the authority of a website? They want to find information or shop for what they are looking for.. not see a green bar changing every time they goto different websites.

 

An average joe will want to see the authority of the website because there is no other way he can trust a site.
If some one is on a site from methods other than search what is the way to trust the information given on the website for an average joe ? Yes it is that green bar

So stop worrying

 

Why is this necessary? Very few general directories pass anything in the way of traffic so that leaves back links. Does Google really differentiate between one directory and another. As far as I am aware there arn't any meaningful measures of relevence as yet but that might be one area to look at.

 

No.. He gave his reply to members asking for Frequent PR update.

 

really dunno if its goin to happen or no but i hope it doesnt

 

That is why i have delayed my directory project. I have an intution that something is gonna happen to the PR.

Dependency on PR of a directory is too much. New directories will loose a lot. Only the top directories in google would continue to earn.

My whole business revolves around PR and I know that is pretty bad. Depending on any one source is bad.

If PR is scrapped (one day or another it is bound to happen), I might jump into products market. Launch a few softwares or some cool scripts. Its not that bad market.

I agree with you.

Webmasters manipulating the PR is the only concern that makes me think that PR would be scrapped on day.


Although I sometime myself decide website quality by looking at its PR.
Yesterday I was shopping for a camera and i bumped into a website from some source (not from search), I checked the PR, then backlinks and then indexed pages to check the quality of website. A normal person would check their feedbacks.

 

PageRank is just for webmasters, for normal internet users pagerank is of no importance. Do you think my mother cares about pagerank when visiting a website? No, she only cares about the results. Searching google and finding something, with or without pagerank.

Webmasters who build links for websites should know better than to rely soly on pagerank. Linkbuildig companies like webuildpages or seomoz passed this stage a long time ago.

Reference material: http://www.seomoz.org/article/link-building-guide, http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml, http://www.jimboykin.com/site-backlinks

Just read a quote somewhere:

Hopefully this will become the new measurement standard for web directories: send my listing traffic and you will have more business from me!

 

Exactly the same thing we would do because we are all addicted to this type of Quality check and we dont just rely on the testimonials

 

Testimonial can be manipulated......
Search results/PR/BL could also be manipulated.....
ohhh. well.......