With the exception of listings in the major directories, it seems to me that the majority of webmasters just add their site to directories in the hope that they can increase their Pagerank. Is this possible? Is really Google this stupid? Anyone with a few dollars to spare and a lot of time not to mention submission services can do this very easily. I would appreciate to hear from members their experience in this respect, good or bad. Whatever the case this just shows the current weakness of search engines rather than their strength. Internet Pollution at its best!!!
Being listed in a directory will help your pagerank. This is an undisputed fact. Whether they help much in your rankings is a totally different question.
I agree to an extend that any link will add something to your Pagerank. My question came after doing some resarch though... I checked the links for two websites. Website A had 493000 links with a PageRank 6 but Website B had only 3710 links and also PageRank 6. Now links only form part of the PageRank calculation. I personally think Google is giving more and more emphasis on their other factors for Ranking.
As a rule of thumb, yes a link do have a value. A high quality link is just so much better than a low quality one. So it is close to worthless with low quality links. Quality and quantity is what counts. In quality, the PR figure is just one parameter. Another point, two PR6 homepages could be very different in terms of PR. If the one is a low PR6 and the other a high PR6, it is a very big difference. The scaling is not liniar afaik, the high PR6 could be 10 times harder to get than the low PR6.
I think you are confusing PageRank with the ranking of a website. PageRank is soley related to inbound links and is nothing to do with other factors. PR is a logarithmic scale so PR6 is 100 times harder to get than PR4.
Many people still think that high PR is the main goal. It is certainly easier to enter into link exchanges with topic relevent websites when you have good pr on your site. To me all those links in little known directories that help creep up your PR are well worthwhile if it encourages someone with a very relevent site to link to mine.
Directory submition will help your rank as it gives you more incoming links (one of the main factors for ranking nowadays). Just remember that the link has to stay in place a long time (I think about 3 months) to be recognized by google
I gotta agree there stuw.Better PR will get you better quality relevant links.It's a building process.