It may turn out to be positive. It is about time people stopped bowing before the unholy PR god and pay attention to the important things such as SE indexing, serps and quality.
I doubt it means anything. Smart SEO people know it's more about relevance to your site and the organic traffic the directory gets than PR. So I generally start my search with niche directories, then high traffic directories where the traffic comes from the search engines (rather than from webmasters just looking for a link). I consider PR a bonus.
I doubt it means anything? come on! dont tell me you look a PR2 the same way you look a PR7, thats hypocrisy!
I don't look at them the same. I'm likely to avoid the PR7 directory if it's being promoted within webmaster circles as the PR is less likely to have been earned and more likely manipulated.
As usual an excellent point. When I look at high PR sites with eye toward submitting it seems, more often than not there is something which causes them to fail my 'smell test' (gut instinct) and I move on.
Yeah, I would say too that it's better to aim for the sites which have real traffic and have earned there place in the listings of the search engines. Many domains with high PR might have been dropped recently and re-registered as a directory, which means that of course the owner did not earn the PR and it is basically void. Watch out for those.
yes PR update is taking to long, but i thinks it will not damage directory business, because beside PR their are also some other parameter that will determine the rank of directory.
While PR is a rough guide to a site's authority, it is traffic that matters. I would say that PR6 and above have meaning in terms of traffic flow patterns. PR5 is on the edge.
That would be a great thing. It has been tried but, as far as I know nothing has caught on. Something like an association who would develop a set of criteria for displaying their seal. Problem is few are willing to do the work unless they feel it can be used to promote their agenda.
I believe that PR has value in that it does help determine authority sites as viewed by Google and links from authority sites definitely carry weight in Google's algorithms. Even more so, if visitors follow the link and spend time on the target site.
Ye, authority maybe. But I do know of many high-rated PR sites who are just spammy. Even if it means authority it falls away for new sites that are strong enough to have high PR, but doesnøt have it because PR is not updated.
"Even more so, if visitors follow the link and spend time on the target site. " - this is very interesting. I think this is a very important measurement in Googles algoritm.
Niche directories are general held to higher standards and you may have better results submitting to those. It can be hard to find general directories that actively review, are well indexed and aren't sitting on the same IP with dozens of other directories.