Here are recent stats from our database of 19,000 directories. Directories have certainly held their own over the last 3 years. Not bad, considering there are some pretty crappy directories out there. Sure some of the PR can be attributed to dropped domains but the PR for these sites usually settles to a real number after a year of two. Many of these sites have been listed for over 5 years. This table shows the percentage change since the last toolbar PR update in April of 2010. For further information on the results see my directory PR blog post. Your comments are welcome. P.S. I know not everyone cares about PR.
It may look like it but I don't think we can imply that the number of directories has doubled. I has taken 5 years to accumulate the list, mostly through research. My estimate is that the number of directories has not changed much in the last couple of years.
It would be interesting to see the percent distribution for each rank and date. It looks like things are staying pretty consistent. For example, in April 2010, PageRank 4 represented 13.6% of all listed directories. And then in the latest 2011 update we have 14.5% of directories at pagerank 4.
Here you go David. I calculated the percentage distribution for some of the dates. Things look pretty consistent.
I assume that these are the PRs of the home pages. But a lot od directories have high PRs on the home page, but their category pages are PR=0 or PR=NA. I don't think this is a reason not to submit, since PR probably isn't as important as it used to be. But I do wonder why directories are different from most other websites in this way. Can anyone explain it?
Very nice stats, thanks for letting us know. I believe however, that pagerank is not everything. Information content is what matters most.