Around a year and a half ago Google unleashed its’ wrath on general web directories. With bolts of lightning (not quite but just as painful to the directory owners) it struck down the page rank of some of the best know directories for buying links. Let’s see how they have faired 18 months later.
http://www.ewebpages.org/ still sitting at page rank 0
http://cdhnow.com/ stuck on page rank 0
http://www.dirspace.com/ zero it is
http://www.linkforever.net/ zero page rank bar love
and it goes on and on….it seems that almost all of these directories have remained in Google’s ‘bad’ list and in addition to having their page rank stipped they also don’t rank for their domain names.
One in the list that stands out and seems to have found a way to get back into Googles graces is http://www.avivadirectory.com/ they have a page rank four and also rank for their domain name, with site links no-less. I know from reading the webmaster boards that the owner of avivadirectory put in a ton of time trying to rectify the problems that landed them in hot water with Google and it looks like they found the magic formula (perhaps an ebook is in the works).