Last month, I asked if the PageRank update was ever coming. And I ask that again today because it is now September 9 and it is going on a month that the update is late. Now, that is old business, but it brings about another question that I think I have an opinion for. My friend over at King Nomar talked about how he is wondering if his directories were actually a good investment. He owns a lot of them, but there’s a problem…The PR update is not coming. It’s not, I’ve decided. So, what does that mean for him?
I personally don’t think that directories are dying so much as becoming a bit different. A lot of directories made their money because of PR. A lot of us (me included) submitted to higher PR directories simply because they would help me get a better PR which in return would allow me to sell links. But, with PR not coming back, I think what will happen is people will start removing a lot of those directories. A lot of people would make about forty directories and try and get them all to PR4 and then sell links on them for cheap to maximize profits. That won’t happen anymore.
What will happen is people will make one or two directories. They will get a lot of traffic pumping to them and that is what will become the new directory. Rather than PR being important to webmasters, what will matter now is how much traffic that directory gets. And since it will be so important to push traffic to each directory, they won’t be able to run as many of them. I think that this will destroy a lot of directories, but I also think that it’ll do a lot of good for the market. The fewer the directories, the better each one will be. And that is important in my opinion.
