I agree as ive noticed the same thing after i did more researchin and not on directories but just the general websites that are included in one off my directories. the average again was loss of 1 PR level which would hint that the link count or algo changed and became that much harder to achieve the next level. thx malcolm
Yes, I noticed the same look at this thread with stats from my PR update on more than 5000 dirs. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=316886
I would agree with this. I think Google knows how relatively useless the toolbar PR is and are trying to get some of the "respect" back in having a high PR. From my own observations many many many "proud grey ladies" of the internet have taken a 1 PR drop essentially across the board. There are so many possible reasons for how this occurred that it's pointless to speculate but I think the "why" is because they want to tighten up the difficulty of achieving high page rank again.