Is Google attempting to take away the PageRank backlink benefits from submitting sites to directories?

Remember a few months ago, many directories were penalized with PR0 homepages – even if they were high quality with good websites?

That practice was overturned a month later – and the homepages were returned to their normal PR – as well as the internal pages.

As of recently, many directories are stripped of their PR for the internal pages. Even PR5 and 6 directories that have been popular for years by well known SEOs, – regardless of whether they give Free backlinks, Paid links or Related reciprocal links or how many links are in the different categories

So apparently, this is another Google search quality tactic to make link building less useful for gaining high organic SERPs rankings.

Perhaps, it is now better to create manual directories instead of using the well known templates. It seems there are so many of them being used, it is easy for Google to penalize them in their index with a high degree of accuracy.

Of course selling links on the homepage – in theory – will still get the link juice taken away, so even that is not a loophole.

Here is a good tool to verify the INTERNAL PAGES PR of any directory you are considering submitting to – it takes a while to load – but it is a time saver. Also you can order the pages by PR

http://www.seotoolbag.com/internal_page_pr.php

This tool will allow you to check the Backlink PR and anchor text of those directories to see if they are still offering you any pull

http://www.seotoolbag.com/check_backlinks.php

DMOZ still has it's PR. Are there any other website directories that still have their PR?

who cares? I dont exchange links for PR .. my rankings are solid so I don't care what the PR of my links pages are.